Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen was born in 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, where her father was rector. When she was 25 the family moved to Bath till her father's death in 1805, then to Chawton in Hampshire where Jane lived with her mother and sister. She wrote six novels. Sense and Sensibility was first in 1811, then Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma(1816). Northanger Abbey and Persusaion were both published posthumously, in 1817. Jane Austen died in 1817. Well-received during her lifetime, since her death she has become known as not just one of the greatest writers of English fiction, but one of the most beloved.

Joanna Lumley was born in Kashmir and educated in Malaysia and Sussex. She has spent much of her life in books, reading them night and day, and sometimes even writing them. Reading is the prop and mainstay of her life, but she has wrenched herself away to act in theatre, films and television, criss-crossing the globe with television documentaries and lending her voice to as many deserving causes as she can. Dazzled by the wit and wisdom of others, she cuts out and keeps treasured pieces she wishes she had written herself. She is married to the conductor Stephen Barlow who reads all the time: theirs is a quiet household.