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There have been many film and TV adaptations of War and Peace, but the 2016 BBC series written by Andrew Davies and directed by Tom Harper is especially accessible to the contemporary audience. In this case accessible is a good thing because it will drive viewers to the source. The Louise and Aylmer Maude translation, okay, we have learned our lesson.

The novel is huge and sprawling and this version is abridged to fit into six one-hour episodes. It makes short work of those pages and pages of scheming relatives trying to keep Pierre from his inheritance. You get just enough of a taste of the good stuff: Pierre getting roped into marriage with Helene who sleeps around, the dashing Prince Andrei who is sick of life, the lovely Natasha pining for her fiancé and seduced by that terrible Kuragin, the battles of Austerlitz and Borodino, Helene’s comeuppance, the heartbreaking dog. The cast is wonderful: Paul Dano as Pierre, James Norton (now the frontrunner in the betting for the next James Bond) as Andrei, Stephen Rea as Prince Vassily and Gillian Anderson as Princess Scherer.

Of course everything depends on our falling in love with Natasha, and Lily James has to compete with the ghost of Audrey Hepburn, but she acquits herself gracefully. That ballroom scene: we really, really want Andrei to ask her to dance.

And like Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, which also takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, the Rostov matriarch is the one who worries about money.