> "Make haste! Make haste! … there is no time to be lost—we are going to Bristol."

Local historian and chair of Brislington Conservation & History Society, Jonathan Rowe, reveals Jane Austen's connections with Bristol, in her novels and life, and also tells the story of her novelist niece, Catherine Anne Hubback (1818 - 1877), whose husband is buried in St Luke's churchyard, Brislington.

Rowe has recently adapted Jane Austen's unfinished 1792 epistolary novella Lesley Castle, her only work partly set in Bristol, for an upcoming stage production by the Gemini Players in Brislington in October. The evening talk will feature a reading from the play by Emma Bunce, one of the show's performers.