] Frankly, Caroline, I am offended.

This is a wonderful exchange to read - is it a well-balanced Australian who has a chip on both shoulders ?

But why Antigua ???

] What I assumed - and sorry if this sounds repetetive - is that JA sent Sir Thomas to Antigua because she was saying with her usual subtlety that he was a slave-owner, not because she wanted to say he was a Bad Man.

What we do know about Jane Austen is that she wrote on subjects she knew and understood - what a strange concept !!!

Needing a plot device to despatch him somewhere, she took care to send him to an island she actually knew about, because the importance of Antigua in her period was as a naval base - she would have heard about it from her brothers and their fellow officers, and pre-internet, could check little details.

Stewart, who has actually been there, read the history, and spent time in the remains of the dockyard and barracks - it is strange to find Georgian stone pillars and brick buildings on an otherwise rather nondescript Caribbean island.