 On this day in 1815, Jane Austen completed Emma, the last of her novels to appear in her lifetime. That it appeared with a dedication to the Prince Regent, a person whose debauched lifestyle Austen had condemned, and a type she would normally satirize, is a story that might itself have stepped from one of her books — all of them written by “laughing at myself or other people.” |
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St Swithin and the art of paper folding.
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The film One Day, adapted from the book by David Nicholls and with a screenplay by the multi-talented David Nicholls, will be released on Friday in UK cinemas.
Starring Anne Hathaway as Emma and Jim Sturgess as Dexter, it follows the trajectory of the novel in catching up with the university friends each St Swithin’s Day for 20 years. It is directed by Lone Scherfig, whose last film was An Education, which itself was adapted from the book by Lynn Barber and had a screenplay by another novelist, Nick Hornby.
*Authors who were born on St Swithin’s Day – 15 July – include Iris Murdoch, Jacques Derrida, Clive Cussler and David Miliband (Reinventing the Left, 1994).
*One Day is Nicholls’ third novel after Starter for Ten in 2003 (adapted by Nicholls into the 2006 film Starter for 10) and The Understudy in 2005, and has been a word-of-mouth bestseller. It sold its millionth UK copy last month.
*The most controversial aspect of the film, therefore, is likely to be the casting of the beautiful Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway as the student Emma (ordinary-looking British actresses do not exist, apparently – see Bridget Jones’s Diary, Sliding Doors, etc), and her questionable Yorkshire accent. Just ask Daniel Craig, who worked for years on his Ted Hughes accent for the film Sylvia, listening to hours of tapes and perfecting his unique “mixture of Yorkshire-cum-Cambridge-cum London”. Unfortunately, critics called his interpretation “stage Yorkshire”.
