A truth universally acknowledged is that screenwriter Andrew Davies is one of television’s great ‘adapters’, and here he discusses one of his most successful literary challenges and how he turned Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice into the costume drama series that had a whole nation of viewers gripped. Andrew looks back on how he first approached the novel, describes his processes and explains how he came to make Colin Firth’s Mr Darcey take a swim in a lake without taking his shirt off, thereby creating one of television’s most iconic scenes.