Jane Odiwe Jane Austen Sequels

Recently, P and P Tours celebrated the start of one of their fabulous holidays with an evening party in Bath to be held at the beautiful house that was used in the filming of Persuasion. I was invited to my great delight, but I must admit when I was told there would be dancing I felt a little nervous at the prospect! However, I needn't have worried. I wasn't the only one who hadn't been initiated before, and the fact that most of us were beginners only made the evening more fun. Two beautiful and very patient young ladies from the Jane Austen Dancers of Bath came along to show us how to perform the steps. There was a lot to remember! We learnt individual steps, and then the patterns of the dances, not to mention interacting with our partners. Helen Wilkinson who runs the tour ended up with a very poor partner (yours truly) who would keep going in the wrong direction - talk about 'Wrong way, Mr Collins!' I expect the fact that I'd imbibed several glasses of wi...

Laurel Ann from the fabulous Austenprose blog has very kindly invited me to guest blog as part of her Pride and Prejudice without Zombies Group Read. If you've not been keeping up with all the fascinating posts do head on over there - there's something of interest for all fans of Pride and Prejudice. I was thrilled when Laurel Ann asked me if I'd write about the main hero and heroine of the novel especially as I've just finished a continuation of Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are perhaps Jane Austen’s most beloved characters. Pride and Prejudice was written more than two hundred years ago, yet these characters remain as fresh and irresistibly fascinating to us as they were for the first generations that read their tale, and remain the standard by which all other characters in a love story are judged. So, why do we love them so much? Jane Austen tells their story through Elizabeth’s eyes so it’s easy to identify with this heroine who is li...

Sometimes life hands out a little happiness and surprise from most unexpected and unsuspected sources. Yesterday I went to a particularly pretty part of Berkshire with my husband to meet a client of his for lunch. I hadn't really asked where we were going, I was very happy to be going out into the countryside with the thought of spending a lovely afternoon out in the sunshine. We were a little early, and as the surrounding scenery was so gorgeous we decided to have a little tour down the lanes and chose a route at random to explore. There were so many pretty Georgian houses in the area and such quaint cottages, I began to think I'd stepped back in time and wondered if I should meet with one of Jane's characters or even Jane herself. Just as I was admiring everything around we came across a signpost marked with four directions. One of the posts pointed to the direction of Kintbury, which immediately struck a chord with me. Could this possibly be the same Kintbury where the F...

The lovely weather we've been having here in England always makes me think of Lydia Bennet's adventures in Brighton! Here's a little taster of the fun and scrapes she experiences with her friend Harriet Forster. Lydia and Harriet were dressed and downstairs by seven o’clock next morning to go bathing. They left the Colonel snoring away, as he was not due to inspect his troops till one o’clock, and hastened down to the beach to be dipped by Martha Gunn and her ladies. The girls decided to share a bathing machine for changing, but as there was hardly any room to manoeuvre, they kept falling over, partly because of the necessity of standing on one leg to undress and partly because they were laughing so much. Once they had on their flannel gowns and caps, it was time to face Martha Gunn, chief dipper and a woman not to be opposed. She stood in the water whilst her servant and helper led them hand in hand down the steps, but as soon as they hesitated with a first toe in the free...