[1] Recent critics offer a more positive opinion: "Barchester Towers is many readers' favourite Trollope", wrote The Guardian, which included it in its 2009 list of "1000 novels everyone must read".

Even less popular than Mrs Proudie is the bishop's new chaplain, the hypocritical and sycophantic Mr Obadiah Slope, who decides it would be expedient to marry Harding's wealthy widowed daughter, Eleanor Bold.

Dr Stanhope's artistic son Bertie is skilled at spending money, but not at making it; his sisters think marriage to rich Eleanor Bold will help.

Mr Arabin is a considerable scholar, Fellow of Lazarus College at the University of Oxford, who nearly followed his mentor John Henry Newman into the Roman Catholic Church.

Mr Arabin is attracted to Eleanor, but the efforts of Grantly and his wife to stop her marrying Slope interfere with any relationship that might develop.

The literary scholar John Sutherland observes that Trollope suspended work on the novel (having reached the end of Chapter VIII) between February 1855 and May 1856, turning instead to his posthumously published The New Zealander.

During this time he changed his idea of writing a short novel (similar in length to The Warden) to a longer one, and that from this hiatus there arise a number of inconsistencies in the text.

At the beginning of Chapter IX, Sutherland observes that Trollope has Proudie three months onto his term as Bishop - effectively late November.

This starred Donald Pleasence as Septimus Harding, Geraldine McEwan as Mrs Proudie, and launched the career of Alan Rickman as Obadiah Slope.