This is just a quick update ... "Pride and Prejudice" has just finished shooting and looks rather wonderful (I’ve just seen some rushes). They filmed all over the place and ended up in Derbyshire - Chatsworth was a staggeringly grand Pemberley. I didn’t go there but did see some filming at Stamford - our Meryton - where the streets were magically transformed. Crowds of militia marching through, herds of sheep, shops hung with huge sides of beef and slaughtered pheasants...The Assembly Ball scene was filmed in a local potato warehouse, with lots of extras. In Jane Austen’s time everybody went to the subscription dance - it was the social highlight of the week - and so there were children, and dogs, and red-faced farmers, and old ladies. Deliciously bucolic - hoydenish, in fact - and a great contrast to the refinements of the Netherfield ball. Now Working Title are in post-production and I presume the film will be released sometime next year. No news of "Tulip Fever" though they’re hard at work putting it together again and hopefully will shoot it next year. In the meantime I’m adapting my latest novel "These Foolish Things" as a movie. I imagine it as a rather elegaic ensemble piece, drenched in the golden light of a long Indian afternoon. Hopefully quite funny too. It’s always a strange feeling, going back to a novel and winding up its characters again. They always start acting differently, and you discover a whole lot of new things about them. And this time there are so many of them - at least eight main characters, and lots more peripheral ones. Bit of a challenge, really.

"The Lion Children" , the TV film set in Botswana, should be shooting next May. Meanwhile I’ve been at various literary festivals - Beverley, Cheltenham - and will appear at the Ways With Words weekend in Southwold (with Jane Gardam) on 13th November at 4pm. And on 8 November I’m giving a lecture on my favourite works of art as part of the Art Collection Fund’s Fantasy Collecting series - a sort of desert island paintings. More at www.artfund.org
Can’t think of a novel, though. If you have any ideas, email me at info@deborahmoggach.com...I’d love to hear from you, for this or any other reason.