And the winner is... Anne

Let's open today's newsround with The Reader Magazine which has unveiled the winner of the poll to select a classical novel for The Richard and Judy Book Club. Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was one of the contenders... and it is the winner:

And the winner is Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. We’re going to be running plenty of features on this brilliant novel as we go into the autumn as well as campaigning to be allowed to champion it on the Richard and Judy show. In the mean time, as luck would have it, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was featured in the ‘Readers Connect’ feature in issue 30 of The Reader magazine (go on, subscribe, you know you want to). Read all about it [here].

The London Free Press reviews the current production of Wuthering Heights at the London Ontario Fringe Festival:

The Theatre Nemesis production of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is sure to put a chill into a warm summer day.
But London Fringe patrons will surely agree the shiver is worth it as the entrancing production takes us to the dark world of Heathcliff, ably played by Jason Rip.
Rip’s world is taken up mostly by writing and producing, but thankfully he saw a part to bring him back on stage in the challenging character of Heathcliff.
“My life has been a perpetual hell,” Heathcliff says and Rip convinces us.
The chanting, buzzing sound we hear off stage at times also makes us think of hell. L’enfer, c’est les autres, perhaps.
The stark set, two chairs which move from each side of the stage to show characters at either Wuthering Heights or The Grange, doesn’t impede us in taking in all of the drama unfolding. We are able to concentrate on the characters and their performance.
The flashbacks between the old and young Heathcliff (Michael Paylor) are handled effectively. At one point Paylor and Rip say the same lines and it leads to cohesiveness.
We have some sympathy for Heathcliff as he was saved from the streets and becomes a foster child, but then is ridiculed by the son of his new family.
Does this turn him into the evil man he becomes? Surely we must do better by our children.
Heathcliff is driven to revenge and he doesn’t care who gets hurt along the way.
I love the boldness of Ellen Denny’s Catherine as she stands up to him, despite his power, shrewdness and wicked temper.
The production oozes with melodrama, and though that is to be expected from a Victorian era novel, current theatre audiences may find it overdone.
It’s probably a tad too long for Fringe fare as well at 80 minutes, and the blasting white light from the tech booth annoys.
Yet this isn’t much to bear as the cast finds a way to breath new life into an oft-read story.
If you go

What: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, a new adaptation by Marion Johnson
When: Tuesday, 6 p.m.; Thursday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, 2 p.m.
Where: Wolf Performance Hall, London Central Library
Tickets: $9 at door or in advance at www.londonfringe.ca.
Rating: Four (out of five stars) (Kathy Rumleski)

We read on Park University News an article about a study-abroad course with appealingly named Landscapes of Literature: Rambling and Reading with the Wordsworths and the Brontës:

Seven Park University students accompanied Lolly Ockerstrom, Ph.D., assistant professor of English, to the English Lake District in Cumbria, England, in July on a study abroad course, "Landscapes of Literature: Rambling and Reading with the Wordsworths and the Brontes." (...)
The final days of the trip was spent in Haworth, Yorkshire, the home of the Bronte sisters on a bleak moor very different from the lush and dramatic landscapes of the Lake District. They hiked across the rugged Yorkshire moors to Top Withins, the ruins of the stone house that inspired Emily Bronte's novel, Wuthering Heights.(...)
This Study Abroad course will be offered again in the summer of 2009. For more information, contact the Office of International Affairs and Education. (Dr. Lolly Ockerstrom)

The Hill Times talks about the city of Ottawa (Canada) and reminds us of this unforgettable description published almost a year ago in The Times:

More lovely than a pressed wild flower in a copy of Jane Eyre. (Jeremy Clarkson)

It seems that the Heathcliffgate episode is here to stay for a long, long time. Two more sightings in the press:

The fact is, Gordon, your image is one of satanic, brooding darkness. Now, you seem proud of this, hence your little joke about the comparisons to Heathcliff. But while these might be qualities one desires in a heartbroken lover (or not, come to that - Cathy didn't exactly have an ending to which most women aspire), it is definitely not what gets one's mojo going when it comes to political leaders. (Hadley Freeman in The Guardian)

But Blairism? It is the politics of the Cheshire Cat, and there is only one politician who can do the grin (poor old Gordon's is more of a rictus, like Heathcliff howling for Cathy's ghost). Beyond the grin, there is only one useful definition of Blairism: make it up as you go along. (Bruce Anderson in The Independent)

The Times reviews the theatre comedy Surviving Spike, now at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival on The Fringe:

[Michael] Barrymore’s problem in Surviving Spike is that he seems far too respectable for the real-life comedian he’s impersonating. I don’t think I’ve seen such miscasting since Cliff Richard tried to reinvent himself as Heathcliff. (Benedict Nightingale)

Mille Feuilles talks about Emily Brontë (in French), to follow Him has a post on Jane Eyre (comparing her with the Bible's Proverbs 31), Amelie 78 devotes a post to Jane Eyre 2006 (in Norwegian) and Mens News Daily reviews Joyce Carol Oates's 1988 book Woman Writer, which includes her essay on Jane Eyre.

Categories: Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Theatre, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights