Austen project

More than 200 years since she first put pen to paper, Jane Austen remains a phenomenal brand - with more than 70 re-workings of her six completed novels in print.
The author's works - which have long been out of copyright - are constantly being revisited, in books and on screen.
This summer saw Baker's Longbourn, a novel set "below stairs" in the Bennet household, meet with critical admiration on both sides of the Atlantic.
And in October, HarperCollins published Trollope's modern interpretation of Sense and Sensibility - the first in its six-book Austen Project.
Fans of Jane Austen - or Jane-ites - are often disappointed by modern versions of her tales
Alexander McCall Smith's version of Emma and Val McDermid's Northanger Abbey will follow next year.
All the authors must stick with each individual novel's existing plot and characters, but are free to make some changes.
Trollope herself advised Austen fans against reading it: "There are few fans of classic writers who identify themselves so intimately with the writer as Jane-ites," she told the Financial Times.
"They feel very close to Jane, and very possessive. And my message to them is, don't upset yourselves. Don't read it," she added.
"Speaking for myself, I feel I ought to read them but I cannot overcome my prejudices," says Maureen Stiller, honorary secretary of the Jane Austen Society in the UK.
"As a society, our objective is to bring people to Jane Austen, her life and novels," says Stiller, but whether the newer works actually lead readers or viewers to the original novels is "an open debate".
She maintains the reader or viewer who comes to Austen via sequels and adaptations may find modern expectations "may not be realised by the original novel".
'Dripping shirt'
Ruppin disagrees.
"I don't think there is a problem getting people to pick up Austen anymore," he says.
"The turning point was Colin Firth coming out of a lake in his dripping shirt and, at the same time, Penguin starting to issue their popular classic series - which you could buy for £1."
"All of a sudden the classics were transformed from being these stuffy books you were forced to read at school, into classic works of literature everybody realised had stood the test of time."
This Christmas sees PD James's 2012 thriller Death Comes to Pemberley - which follows the murder of Lydia Bennet's husband Wickham - adapted for television.
Matthew Rhys, who plays Mr Darcy in the three-part drama, calls it a "very shrewd move" on the part of the respected writer.
"This doesn't set you up for direct comparisons of a sequel, and PD James is writing in a style that she's incredibly adept in, but still using incredibly famous characters," he told the BBC.
"It's a bit of a win-win… You're ticking a lot of boxes."
David Suchet bowed out as Hercule Poirot in Poirot's Final Case in November
Sophie Hannah's untitled Poirot novel comes more than 90 years after Christie introduced the Belgian detective in her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920.
Her grandson, Matthew Pritchard, told the BBC the commission was motivated, in part, by waning interest in Christie's works - in particular among the younger generation.
"Sometimes series do come to a natural end," says Ruppin.
"Think about Eoin Colfer's writing of the sixth Hitchhiker book, which was borne out of desire to do something for fans who felt they had been robbed early of a great talent.
"But Eoin Colfer just wasn't Douglas Adams.
"Some writers are unique. Nobody can write like Douglas Adams, apart from Douglas Adams - and we have lost him now, so unfortunately that means there won't be anything else that remotely comes up to scratch."