The recent BBC production of E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia, with Anna Chancellor and Miranda Richardson, served to remind us how much better had been that of 1985/6 for Channel 4 with Geraldine McEwan and Prunella Scales as the feuding ladies of Tilling — as I pointed out here at the time.

Ms McEwan’s defining account of the role of Lucia was noted in the generous obituaries following the death of the actress (remembered by a wider public, of course, as Miss Marple) last Friday.

Less prominently mentioned — indeed absent from the Daily Telegraph’s obituary altogether — was her stunning contribution to the success of the BBC’s 1982 production of The Barchester Chronicles.

In this adaptation of Anthony Trollope’s novels The Warden and Barchester Towers, she played the part of the formidable Mrs Proudie, the wife of the ineffectual Bishop Proudie (excellently portrayed by Clive Swift) and very much the power behind his throne.

How well television has served Trollope in the past. One thinks, too, of the BBC’s brilliant account of the Palliser novels. The 26 episodes, all scripted by Simon Raven, confined us to barracks for a sizeable chunk of 1974, this being the days before video. The Way We Live Now, again from the BBC, was a triumph in 2001, for its star David Suchet especially.

Why no further excursions into Trollope’s extensive oeuvre? one wonders. Come to that, why none into that of Muriel Spark, whose Jean Brodie was portrayed by McEwan for ITV in 1978? The author, in fact, judged her creation to be superior to that on film by Maggie Smith.