Susannah York as Nellie

As we informed, last week artist Lesley Martin worked with Brontë Parsonage visitors to create a giant artwork on the Parsonage front lawn, made of natural materials. Keighley News reports the results (Picture source):

Environmental artist Lesley Martin created the piece - based around the number 80 - entirely from flowers, ferns and leaves. (...)
Brontë Parsonage arts officer Jenna Holmes said Monday's anniversary celebrations had been appreciated by all.
She said: "With the free entry offer, we had a lot of people come who perhaps haven't been for a long time, which is really nice.
"In it's 80th year the museum is doing really well, we have some really exciting projects - for example the Emily Brontë portrait from the National Portrait Gallery and we have the Gondal manuscripts too. It is just going from strength to strength."
The natural artwork was just one of a string of events planned for the Parsonage this month.
On August 22, chainsaw artist Dominic Clare will create a sculpture from a felled tree that Emily Brontë is said to have planted. (Lisa Campbell)

The cast for the upcoming Birmingham Repertory Theatre production of Wuthering Heights (with a new adaptation by April de Angelis) has been announced and brings surprises:

Heathcliff: Antony Byrne

Lockwood: Simon Coates

Edgar/Linton: Toby Dantzic

Hindley/Hareton: Edmund Kingsley

Cathy: Amanda Ryan

Joseph/Old Mr Linton: David Whitworth

Frances: Victoria Yeates

Nellie Dean: Susannah York

Susannah York played Jane Eyre in Delbert Mann's 1970 TV movie.

The Independent talks about panopticons. We are particularly interested in the Atom one:

Wycoller village, thought by some to be the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre, is also a place of delights, with its crafts centre, willow sculptures and – best of all - no cars (the lane down to the village is accessible only on foot). And set above all this, amid the brooding moors which inspired the Brontë sisters, just off the road which runs up to Haworth where they were brought up, sits the Atom panopticon. Designed by Peter Meacock, Katarina Novometska and architects WCW the mighty bronze-coated egg is both viewpoint and shelter, offering views through its oval, panoptical apertures across the moors and to east Lancashire's most distinct piece of topography: Pendle Hill, where the witches roamed. Inside atom sits a large stainless steel sphere – representing the last remaining molecule in this particular atom. (Ian Herbert)

The Independent (Ireland) interviews actress and singer Susannah de Wrixon:

Favourite book?
Wuthering Heights for the passion, or anything by Roger McGough for the humour.

Now for some Brontë mentions in several reviews: What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn is reviewed again in the San Francisco Chronicle:

But her real trouble is that she is a romantic. Her parents, happily nestled in their cozy Queens apartment, see in her their embodiment of the American dream: She will marry a successful Russian immigrant businessman, move to a good neighborhood in Manhattan, dress well, entertain, acquire. They grew up under communism, where such ways of measuring success were off limits to them. But Anna has been poisoned by a diet of "Wuthering Heights," old Woody Allen movies and those same French films Lev adores. Since childhood, she has always craved something beyond her reach. (Elizabeth Gold)

Bookreporter reviews The Night Villa by Carol Goodman:

Goodman’s novels always radiate with the tradition of Gothic literature made famous by authors like Charlotte Bronte and Daphne du Maurier, and THE NIGHT VILLA continues this tradition in admirable style. (Ray Palen)

And Newsday's review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows happens to mention the Brontës again:

The novel's heroine is Juliet Ashton, author of a largely unread biography of Anne Brontë, who achieves a modicum of fame for her humorous newspaper columns depicting life in London during the war. As the book opens, Juliet is on a book tour to promote the collected columns, and she is casting about for a new book idea. (...)
Among Juliet's new friends are Amelia Maugery, the local noblewoman, whose private library is virtually the only source for books on Guernsey; Isola Pribby, an ungainly young woman whose interests tend toward the occult and, thanks to the Literary Society, the Brontë sisters. (Erica Marcus)

The Buffalo News reviews Sarah Gavron's film Brick Lane (more information on previous posts):

Indian actor Satish Kaushik is simply marvelous as Chanu, a portly, relentlessly cheerful fellow, who is proud of his volumes of Bronte, Thackeray and Proust, and of his certificates from the university. He’s a clownish figure, setting off each day in his overcoat to look for work or to drive his taxi, bewildered at his daughters’ lack of respect for tradition, a lost soul who more than any of them does not feel at home in London. (Jean Westmoore)

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2008 is full with comedy shows with Wuthering Heights mentions. Some days ago we posted about Watson and Oliver's sketch comedy. Now Chortle talks about some others:

Perhaps surprisingly, this is not the only Fringe act to feature a silly dance routine performed to Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights, as Patrick Monahan also does it. But, as their bumper sticker might read, The Grandees do it better… and not just to Wuthering Heights.

raffyx posts sixty Jane Eyre 2006 icons. The Bigger Pictures reviews Wuthering Heights 1992. El Espejo Gótico translates to Spanish yet another poem by Emily Brontë, A Death-scene.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Books, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Poetry, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights