Ambassadors

Laura Wade

Olivier Award-winning Playwright and Screenwriter

“Jane Austen is such an inspiration for my writing. I love her clever wit and strong female characters and being able to visit the home she imagined in, the desk she wrote at, is an incredible chance to get inside her head and step into her world.  I’m honoured to be an ambassador to Jane Austen’s House alongside Sam.”

Samuel West

Actor and Theatre Director

“After appearing in the BBC film adaptation of Persuasion 25 years ago, I became a big admirer of Jane Austen’s writing, her biting humour and brilliant characterisation.  Visiting Jane Austen’s House was a rare and special glimpse into the life of a beloved artist and now I’m thrilled to be an ambassador. Laura and I can’t wait until our children are old enough to start reading the novels!”

David Baddiel

Award-Winning Comedian, Author, Screenwriter, Director and TV Presenter

“Jane Austen, often depicted as just a sparky spinster, is in fact one of the greatest geniuses in English literature, the mother of the modern novel. The reason her work is still read and filmed today is that she created a type of storytelling that was at once eternal and centuries ahead of its time. I’m proud – as a much lesser storyteller – to be the ambassador for Jane Austen’s House in 2019. Also it’ll really upset Giles Coren.”

Lucy Worsley

Historian, Author, Curator and TV Presenter

“Jane Austen lived her life in other people’s houses, and mostly on other people’s terms as a dutiful daughter or a helpful spinster aunt.

Only when she finally moved to the cottage at Chawton did she find something like a real home.

It’s lovely to think of her blooming here, settling down at last and becoming a successful novelist.  But it’s also devastating to think that her final illness began here too.

I hope that Jane’s Fund will secure the future of this modest – but oh-so-moving – building forever.”

Joanna Trollope

Author​

“It’s a rare experience to stand on the very spot where some of the best loved novels in the world were written, but that’s what you can do at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton. If any literary monument ever deserved our support, this modest, charming and atmospheric place is it.”

Paula Byrne

Author and Scholar ​

“I am supporting Jane’s Fund because helping to maintain this historic house is of vital national and international importance. It is the place where Jane Austen lived happily in the company of a small circle of women, and where she was able to write and publish her novels, which are the most incredible gift to the world.”

Kathy Lette

Author

“Beneath her humorous veneer, Austen is a barbed commentator on the battle between the sexes. As a woman writer, she realised that ‘poetic justice’ is the only true justice in the world – and set about impaling misogynistic enemies on the end of her pen…It was Jane Austen who made me want to write novels so that I too could comedically knee-cap the pompous, the pretentious and the patriarchal. Jane’s former home must be protected as a place of inspiration for future generations.”