John Jarndyce

John Jarndyce is master of Bleak House and the reluctant heir to the endless Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit that has poisoned his family for generations. He takes in three young wards, including Esther Summerson, with open-handed generosity, and deflects any talk of his own feelings by blaming a shift in the wind.

Denis Lawson plays goodness without making it dull, which is the hardest trick in Dickens. His warmth is real but guarded, his deflections ('the wind is in the east') doing the work of a man who has learned that hope, in this story, is dangerous to hold too tightly.