22 Saturday 23 April 2016 The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph Saturday 23 April 2016 23 BOOKS

Mr Bennet, and to try it on with a of his “readiness to approve few of that good man’s daughters. What became of an Arab caliphate” once the Lizzie finds the letter in which Ottomans had been kicked out. Marry Collins proposes his visit “pompous The British would never have in style”. “Could he be a sensible countenanced a greater Arabia, man?” she asks her father. “No, my Lawrence’s Arabia? let alone a revived caliphate. But dear, I think not,” he replies. “I it’s an open question whether have great hopes of finding him the ordinary Arab wanted such quite the reverse. There is a a state anyway. As Faulkner me, babe mixture of servility and self- reminds us, the Arabs hadn’t importance in his letter, which lived under a unified state for promises well. I am impatient to more than 1,000 years, and were see him.” used to being dominated by Collins lives up to his promise: greater powers; most had their Mr Bennet finds him “as absurd first allegiance to their tribe. as he had hoped”. His enjoyment Lawrence looked on the of the man’s vulgarity is hidden Arabs as a noble race embodying behind a “resolute composure of Isil has turned TE Lawrence’s dream of an medieval martial virtues. His countenance”, interrupted only by admiration for Faisal, the man an “occasional glance at Elizabeth”. Arab nation into a nightmare, says Sameer Rahim later crowned King of Syria These two are not alone in their and then Iraq, was typically From zombies to soft porn, ‘Pride and complicit, covert pleasure: Austen dramatic. Faisal was “almost and her reader are in on it, too. LAWRENCE OF regal in appearance,” he wrote, Prejudice’ has inspired thousands of At such moments, the reader of ARABIA’S WAR “like a European, and very like Austen’s novels feels, as Katherine by Neil Faulkner the monument of Richard I.” spin-offs. Now Curtis Sittenfeld takes it Mansfield observed in 1920, the But Lawrence later became “secret friend of their author”. 528PP, YALE, £25 disillusioned with Faisal to suburban America. By Duncan White – regarding him as weak-minded hat friendship is not much and indecisive – and the Arabs o English the clefts and members of Pride Tof a secret anymore. The more generally. Faulkner is novel has and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts. Lady remarkable fecundity of probably overstating it when he been re- Catherine de Bourgh would find it Janeite fan fiction is tempting ÌÌÌÌÌ says that Arab nationalism was imagined all “highly improper”. publishers to bring it to the he Blue Castle in purely a British invention, but and retold Why has Pride and Prejudice cultural mainstream. A few years eastern Jordan is the dynamics at play were hardly more become this cultural urtext? ago, HarperCollins launched usually buzzing clear-cut. often than Where did the microbial epidemic the Austen Project, which set with tourists keen to That is why all the talk of N Pride and break out? Was it Colin Firth being established writers the challenge T see the rooms from a “great betrayal” of the Arab Prejudice. thrown in a pond? Andrew Davies’s of reworking the novels for the which TE Lawrence cause by the 1916 Sykes-Picot There is the Hollywood film, the 1995 BBC adaptation sexed the modern day: Joanna Trollope directed the Arab Revolt. But when agreement is overblown. Bollywood film, the Mormon novel up a great deal, with a hot did Sense and Sensibility,Val we went last summer, apart from a Lawrence played the warrior- film and the zombie film (and and bothered Darcy emerging from McDermid Northanger Abbey, and forlorn tour guide, it was deserted. sheikh but never forgot that his also the zombie book, the zombie his dip in the lake at Pemberley in a Alexander McCall Smith Emma. Jordan is perfectly safe, but the ultimate loyalty was to the British comic, the zombie prequel and clingy wet shirt. That series, which Now Sittenfeld, author of the war in nearby Syria and the rise of Empire. Faisal also knew the the zombie sequel). There’s opened up the novel to saucier coming-of-age novel Prep (2005) Isil have put off most westerners. price he had to pay for throwing Bridget Jones’s Diary, which interpretation, remains iconic; to a and a fictional First Lady’s memoir, What would Lawrence have out the Turks and becoming king. transports elements of the novel generation of Janeites, it has American Wife (2009), has taken on made of the mess the Middle East He used Lawrence as much as to the modern day, and there’s become inextricably bound up Pride and Prejudice. is in? And might he have felt some Lawrence used him. Lost in Austen, which transports with their love of the original, Eligible is set in the country club responsibility? Like nearly a modern woman back into the fuelled by the fervent homage of suburbs of Cincinnati, Sittenfeld’s everything about this man, it is here the Englishman world of the novel. There’s The Bridget Jones’s Diary, in which hometown, and the five Bennet hard to say. Neil Faulkner, whose Wexcelled was in Lizzie Bennet Diaries told entirely Firth was cast again, to play informative book examines the military tactics – well through video blogs. There’s Bridget’s haughty suitor contest between the British- described by Faulkner. He had PD James’s murder-mystery Mark Darcy. Spin-offs include backed Arabs and the German- an instinctive grasp of what the sequel – Death Comes to Pemberley But that BBC series, influential Bridget Jones’s backed Ottomans during the First author calls the “anthropology – and Jo Baker’s below-stairs as it was, represents only a recent World War, has no doubt that the of war”, marshalling the talents retelling, Longbourn. Now Curtis flourishing of a venerable literary Diary and Spank post-war carve-up of Arabia by the of men from different cultures. Sittenfeld’s Eligible, published phenomenon. There is something Me, Mr Darcy imperial powers led to Historically, the Arabs had been this month, reimagines the novel about Austen’s books, and about BBC “sectarianism, violence, intractable IMAGES GETTY successful in swift camel attacks. in the American Midwest. Pride and Prejudice in particular, conflict and untold human Lawrence saw they could do These, it transpires, are that makes people feel an intimate carrying Austen beyond her her canonical seriousness squared takes place on estates insulated Peer under the sisters are all a decade or so older suffering”. Faulkner’s judgment to their archives (worried, Master tactician: the same to the Turks. He led only the beginning. If you connection to her, an intimacy they “intrinsic merit”. To James and up against the enthusiasts who from the turbulence of history; Regency rug: than in Austen’s novel. They are may be sweeping, but he is right to Faulkner speculates, what might Colonel TE attacks on the 800-mile railway peer under the Regency rug, want to share with fellow fans, his like, she was being read by the found in her fictional worlds a the action, such as it is, amounts Colin Firth as Mr brought back under the family roof see the origins of the conflicts in be revealed about the Armenian Lawrence in 1916 track from Damascus to Medina, you will find an extraordinary whether by hosting replica dinner wrong sort of people. place to play. Even as serious to the characters making involved Darcy and when their father suffers a heart Iraq and Syria in a period that saw massacres.) The other reason forcing the enemy to waste world teeming with Pride and parties or writing ebooks about In 1913, we find what is a figure as EM Forster would decisions about how to while Jennifer Ehle as attack; his property, rather than the end of the Ottoman Empire, Lawrence’s narrative dominates resources in constant repairs. He Prejudice variations. Despite Darcy being a vampire. apparently her first piece of pronounce himself “slightly away their leisure. It’s like a Lizzie Bennet in being “entailed” away, is about to and the rise of Arab nationalism. is because he was an accurate as developed the hit-and-run tactics the noblest ambition towards According to the Austen scholar fan fiction, Sybil G Brinton’s imbecile” about Austen. “To be literary spa holiday. the 1995 BBC be repossessed. Darcy is a doctor; Since the 2003 Iraq war, when well as evocative writer. Faulkner that would be taken up later by quantitative rigour, I stopped Deidre Lynch, the genesis of Old Friends and New Fancies, a one with Jane Austen!” he wrote. adaptation; Bingley is a doctor and a reality Britain helped to break the country found that, “wherever it could be anti-colonial guerrilla fighters counting at around 200 when this “Janeite cult” can be traced sequel that mixes characters from “It is a contradiction in terms, yet n the surface, this is below, a still television star. Wickham is split it once designed, there has been tested”, Lawrence’s account was – not least by Iraqis fighting the the scale of it became too back to 1870 and the publication several of Austen’s novels. Then, every Jane Austenite has made Osheer escapism; but, from Pride and into two people. renewed interest in Middle Eastern confirmed, “implying that the US and British after 2003. dizzying. An example. Remember of A Memoir of Jane Austen by in 1923, RW Chapman’s editions the attempt.” oddly, this is a fantasy Prejudice and For all its creative solutions to history. Lawrence, though, has detractors who have portrayed But as Faulkner reminds us, Mary Bennet? Probably not JE Austen-Leigh, her nephew. of five Austen novels appeared, The immersive impulse that world in which we are rooting Zombies the problems of adapting Austen rarely been out of fashion. His him as a liar, a charlatan and a self- the war wasn’t all camel raids: – she’s the boring sister. I found This cosy biography, which probably the first scholarly Forster felt is the same one that for an underdog. Lizzie Bennet to the contemporary world, the memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom promoter are wrong”. in Palestine, General Allenby 23 adaptations dedicated to made Aunt Jane seem warm and editions of an English novelist ever drives people to write and her sisters are not secure in problem is that Eligible invites (1922), cast him as a disappointed fought a brutal mechanised war. telling her story. My guess is that approachable, turned her into a published. The different today’s fan fiction, their world, threatened with the the reader to treat it as a literary romantic; in the David Lean The Vickers Mark 1, an early tank, there must be at least a thousand literary celebrity. Previously, her factions within Austen’s whether Return loss of Longbourn when their parlour game instead of as a film of 1962, he was a sensitive Lawrence played reached a maximum speed of two Pride and Prejudice rewrites out books had been fashionable only readership were staking to Longbourn father dies. Lizzie might be on coherent fiction in its own right. warrior, betrayed by the British the warrior-sheikh miles an hour, the men inside there in one form or another; it’s in high society; although her out their ground: the or Spank Me, the gentry ladder, but she is near Fan fiction is, at heart, about and brutalised by the Turks; lately, contending with temperatures highly probable a new one has work was championed by an scholars who Mr Darcy. the bottom rung, far below the feeling part of a small, like-minded academics have accused him of but never forgot his up to 50C. The brutality of been published while you were elite coterie, including Sir championed There is snobbish likes of Miss Bingley community; that essence is lost being a fantasist, overplaying his hand-to-hand killing nearly sent reading this paragraph. Walter Scott, Austen died something intrinsic to and Lady Catherine. In short, she when publishers try to push it to attacks on the Ottoman railways. loyalty to Britain Lawrence insane. After the war, Most of the subgenres can be in 1817 with no idea of the Austen’s novels that is an outsider in Darcy’s world, a larger readership. Now, in Faulkner’s Left-leaning he relived his experiences in divided between the chaste or impact her novels would invites her readers to feel and much more sympathetic Jane Austen has always divided study, Lawrence has become a Born out of wedlock in 1888 theatrical shows, then died in a the raunchy. The chaste books have in posterity. such intimacy with her to the reader than if she were a Curtis her readers into the literary “metaphor for the imperialism, to an aristocrat and a governess, motorcycle accident in 1935. retell Austen’s story in every In the 1880s and 1890s, world, and to want to duchess with £10,000 a year. Sittenfeld’s purists and the fans, those who violence and betrayals that tore Lawrence was working in Syria Arab nationalism of the kind imaginable variation; in the deluxe, then illustrated, create their own versions It is ironic, then, that the Eligible is coo over her use of free indirect the region apart a century ago and as an archaeologist when war Lawrence favoured has now been raunchy books, the characters then cheap editions of it. second way Austen hooks readers published by speech and those who dress up in has left it divided into warring broke out. The Germans, as well replaced at its extreme with what copulate in every imaginable were published in There are two ways, I is by making us snobs. Not bad The Borough Regency frocks. In many ways, it fragments ever since”. as allying themselves with the the British airily promised during combination. The chaste ones quick succession. By think, that this works in snobs, obviously, but good snobs: Press (£14.99). is a symbiotic relationship. The It is striking that this war, fought Ottomans, sought to exploit Pan- the First World War: a revived have titles such as Going Home 1905, Henry James Pride and Prejudice. On the connoisseurs of hypocrisy and To order a purists feed on what they see as between Arabs and Turks, is still Islamic feeling to unsettle the caliphate. In 2014, Isil posted to Pemberley and tend towards a could complain one hand, the novel evokes vulgarity. The best example of copy from the the fans’ vulgarity; the fans define seen from the viewpoint of this British Empire. The British also To order this footage online of the Sykes-Picot Catherine Cookson aesthetic; the that the “stiff a fantasy world for the this occurs when the ludicrous Telegraph for themselves against the snobbery Englishman. That is partly a matter played on Muslim sentiments. In book from line between Iraq and Syria being raunchy ones favour titles such breeze of the modern reader, both period- Mr Collins invites himself to £12.99 plus of the purists. It’s all very much of sources. The Arabs didn’t write 1915, Sir Henry McMahon, high the Telegraph blown up. Lawrence thought the £1.99 p&p, call as Conjugal Obligation, and grade commercial” specific and somehow, Longbourn, to examine the estate like the social dynamic of Pride much down and the Turks restrict commissioner of Egypt, wrote to for £20, call Arab revolt had failed; in fact it 0844 871 1515 from soft-focus euphemism to was paradoxically, timeless. It he is to inherit from his cousin, and Prejudice itself. the access of western historians the Emir of Mecca Sharif Hussein 0844 871 1515 was only just beginning.