The Latest Breaking News from Jane Austen

Steff Aquarone said wealthy people treat coastal villages like a ‘Jane Austen-era summer jaunt’.

Books as a backdrop in a portrait or an interview lend gravitas. They stand for literacy, for education, for a way to open the mind, develop the imagination and get on in life. But not all books are considered to convey such benefits.

We’d like to hear about your most-loved Austen novels and what they mean to you

Most readers hear “pride and prejudice” and immediately think of Jane Austen’s most famous novel, that salty-sweet confection of romance and irony with a fairy-tale ending.

IN FOCUS: With a fresh script and songs by KT Tunstall, the all-singing, all-dancing adaptation of the seminal Nineties teen movie starring Alicia Silverstone has finally hit the West End… starring actors who weren’t even alive when the film was released. Annabel Nugent meets them, along with writer/director Amy Heckerling

Amy Heckerling adapts her own iconic screenplay for a lumbering production in need of more belters from composer KT Tunstall

The standup is hitting new heights of pastiche with Clementine, a riotous one-woman show about a Regency belle seeking a tailcoated beau. As the Edinburgh hit goes on tour, Minnitt explains why her mum’s doing the driving

EXCLUSIVE The Scottish singer-songwriter is going for a hat-trick with 2025 also marking the 20th anniversary of her debut album Eye To The Telescope

Throughout my school years I had an exuberant, elderly piano teacher, Miss Hazel. She was one of five daughters (like me) and, like many young women of her generation, had never married her sweetheart because he did not return from the war.

An erudite exploration of the female writers who influenced the celebrated 19th-century author brings to light neglected or forgotten but often captivating literature

At the heart of the BBC’s new series Miss Austen is a fictional Cassandra Austen (played by Keeley Hawes). Reviews have stressed that the real life Cassandra’s destruction of her sister Jane Austen’s letters has been considered one of the greatest acts of literary vandalism in history. These letters would…