Starring Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Greg Wise and Alan Rickman, alongside Thompson herself, it would win seven Academy Awards nominations and make £100 million worldwide. I will certainly be listening to the audiobook of Northanger too, it sounds great.Sense and Sensibility, the first English language film ever made by Taiwanese director Ang Lee, based on a screenplay by Emma Thompson, from Jane Austen’s novel, was released 25 years ago this month. There are some brilliant recommendations in here and I re-wound and listened to that bit a couple of times scrobbling down the books she mentioned. And I really liked it when Emma talked about the books she has read recently. I enjoyed listening to Emma Thompson talking about her thoughts about the novel and how she had read it as a 13 year old and again recently. Whilst this is one of her lesser works which was written early in her career and published posthumously, this is still a great work of literature from the gothic period and I liked it a lot. I had not read Jane Austen before but was immediately captivated. I had already finished my holiday reading and went to the book exchange in the hotel lobby and after shuffling through the usual Mills and Boon, EL James, Wilbur Smith and Tom Clancy paperback I came across a worn but readable edition of Northanger Abbey. I read Northanger when I was on holiday in Portugal last year. Here Emma Thompson talks about her narration of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. In contrast to Sense and Sensibility, Emma describes Northanger Abbey as a straightforward text the perfect introduction to Austen for those new to her writing.Įmma Thompson talks Northanger Abbey and reading

She does the same with Northanger Abbey, referring to the heroine as a 'sweet girl', her love interest as a 'witty friend' and the villain of the piece as 'an absolute knob-head'.

Having won a BAFTA, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her screenplay adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson has already brought Austen to the 21st Century and introduced her to a new generation. She praises Austen for her unique ability to engage the reader with universal stories of human desires, hopes and foibles, and describes her own long-standing love affair with the author, having first picked up Austen's books at the age of thirteen. Having played the narrator in an all-star-cast adaptation of Northanger Abbey, Emma discusses her favourite passages, characters and themes. In this interview, Emma Thompson shares her considerable insight into Britain's most influential female novelist, the great Jane Austen.

Emma thompson jane austen