"There is an assault on the Brontë landscape going on"

The Guardian summarises quite clearly the two major threats Brontëland faces in the near future: the repairs of the Brontë Parish Church and the housing plans in Haworth:

The Rector of Haworth's three daughters were with him last week as he prepared his sermons for Christmas and the new year, given in the church at the top of the steep hill of Main Street.
"Yes, I have three daughters, but they are not Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and happily they have all grown up to have families of their own," said the Rev Peter Mayo-Smith, incumbent at St Michael and All Angels parish church, where 190 years ago the Rev Patrick Brontë lived in the adjacent parsonage with his own three girls, the writers now established as among the most famous Englishwomen ever to have lived. "I did discover I was married on the same day as Rev Brontë married his Maria though, which was rather spooky." (...)
But all is not well in "Brontëland". This winter Mayo-Smith has found himself at the centre of a battle to communicate to the wider world just how popular Haworth is as a tourist destination. The fate of the historic parish church, together with the future appearance of the whole Pennine village, is soon to be decided. In the middle of this month time will run out both on an appeal for maintenance funds for St Michael's and on a plan to build more modern housing estates in Haworth. (...)

St Michael's roof is leaking badly in several places and the plasterwork and rare wall paintings above the altar are disintegrating. Unsightly plastic sheeting covers the beams over the organ console at the entrance to the corner of the church which is now designated the Brontë Chapel.
Of equal importance to many in Haworth this new year is the parallel struggle to deter developers from building further housing estates across the hills once crossed by the literary sisters and their potent cast of characters.
"There is an assault on the Brontë landscape going on," said Huxley. "It is not deliberate, but the reason so many people come here is to see the streets and the hills and moor that the sisters wrote about. Some of these views should be sacrosanct." (Vanessa Thorpe)

Still a few lists of the best films of the year:

Finally, a recently released romantic film that isn’t littered with crude humor or the necessity to almost completely unclothe everyone in frame. This version of “Jane Eyre” is a slightly more thriller-centric version of the classic romantic tale directed perfectly by Cary Fukunaga. It was really difficult pushing this one lower on the list, especially since this is one of the best romantic films to come out within the past few years, but it still is a worthy film to be on the list. (Melissa in Shockya)

Finding the deepest, darkest seam of thunder and doom in the central romance, this latest, superbly styled account of Jane Eyre is a success on pretty much every level. Superbly cast and wonderfully photographed, it even re-orders the narrative into something more suitable for a cinematic presentation. (Brendon Connelly in Bleeding Cool)

And Filmplicity. And David Quinn who selects Wuthering Heights 2011 as his number one film of the year.
 
Grand Haven Tribune says about Mia Wasikowska's performance:

Mia Wasikowska, who recently received rave reviews for “Jane Eyre” .

ArtDaily remembers the current Sylvia Plath exhibition at The Mayor Gallery in London:

44 never exhibited before drawings by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) will illustrate the strong connection between her writing and artwork. The carefully constructed, pen and ink drawings, which were given to Plath’s daughter, the artist Frieda Hughes, by her father some years before he died, date from 1955, a pivotal period for Plath as she graduated from Smiths College, Massachusetts and won a Fulbright scholarship to Newham College, Cambridge, in England. It was here that she met and ultimately married Ted Hughes (1956) and during the Cambridge years she travelled in Europe, recording what she saw through keenly observed drawings. References to the drawings appear in her diaries and letters, mainly to her mother.

The exhibition includes her sketches of Top Withins.

We don't really know if after seeing the film many people would like to visit the exact location but The Press Association UK reminds us of

The recently-released film Wuthering Heights has showcased the Yorkshire Moors and included scenes shot at 17th century country house Cotescue Park.

The Beloit Daily News is happyabout the fact that

people are still reading.
What was surprising, was the number of classic novels and authors on the list such as Steinbeck, Faulkner, Melville, Dickens, Twain, Brontë, Hemingway, Joyce, and Fitzgerald. Obviously, the names that don't even need to be graced by a first name, like Cher or Madonna. (Debra Jensen-De Hart)

BlogCritics reviews The Literary Ladies' Guide to the Writing Life by Nava Atlas; A Day in the Life, Secret Laboratory and Stef's Book Room (on YouTube) review Wuthering Heights. Finally Open Letters Monthly publishes a long and interesting article by Rohan Maitzen about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.