There’s a charming essay in a little volume, Mr Darcy in Love & Other Jane Austen Studies by Ivor Morris, which I have just scavenged from the pile of books discarded by the Evening Standard’s books editor. It’s on Jane Austen’s Personal Faith, as evidenced by the three known prayers that she wrote and which are published in her Minor Works.

One of the really irritating features of the current obsession with Austen – which shows no sign of diminishing – is that it takes on board everything except the most important thing about her