Destroying their heritage

The Yorkshire Post reports a 'despicable theft' that has taken place at the Old Bell Chapel in Thornton:

Police are continuing to patrol an historic graveyard closely linked to the Brontë family after thieves desecrated it, stealing three ancient headstones which have been there for the past 200 years.
The damage at the Old Bell Chapel, also known as the Brontë Bell Chapel, opposite St James Church on Thornton Road, Bradford, was discovered over the weekend with police branding the theft “despicable”.
Up to 30 metres of Yorkshire stone was also stolen from a pathway in the graveyard next to the chapel where Patrick Brontë was minister between 1815 and 1820 before moving to nearby Haworth.
Officers patrolled the chapel on Saturday night after fears were raised the thieves would return for more stone slabs they had already removed and stacked up in the cemetery.
And last night, West Yorkshire Police said its officers would continue to pay special 
attention to the site during regular patrols.
Ann Dinsdale, acting director of the Brontë Society, condemned the thefts and said numerous sites connected to the family have been targeted in recent years, including Haworth Church which has had lead stripped from its roof.
“People need to be really vigilant, because when it is gone, it is gone,” she told the Yorkshire Post. “I just don’t know how you go about educating people that this is part of their heritage they are destroying.”

The Telegraph and Argus covers the story as well:

It has led to condemnation by councillors responsible for the district’s heritage, who described it as “sickening” and blasted the vandals who are “throwing away hundreds of years of history”. [...]
The damage was discovered on Saturday morning by church warden Steven Stanworth, who said he was left sickened. He now faces the task of trying to find out who the headstones belonged to and contacting family members with the harrowing news.
The stones were taken between 9pm on Friday and 8am on Saturday.
“It is absolutely disgraceful and disgusting,” he said. “One of the headstones was next to the grave of author Joseph Lister, who was a friend of Lord Fairfax’s and was involved in the Siege of Bradford in 1642.
“It is a graveyard. We have had vandalism before but nothing like this. We have no chance of recovering it and how do you put a price on something like that which is 200 years old?
“A historic part of the ground has been taken and desecrated and they must be sick to do this.
“There is no respect for life or death. This is part of our social history they have no idea what they are doing and must be morons.”
Mr Stanworth believes taking the stones would need four men, adding that a jemmy had been left at the site.
On Thursday night in between the church and the chapel, Mr Stanworth said that 30 metres of Yorkshire stone were taken from the Brontë Way and stone has also gone from the chapel wall.
“I need to raise awareness with the people living around here, because we can’t allow this to happen,” he added. [...]
Councillor Val Slater, Heritage Champion for Bradford Council, said it was terrible news, while Coun Susan Hinchcliffe, the portfolio holder for tourism, said: “Incidents like this are sickening.
“The Old Bell Chapel has a strong significance to the Brontë story, a major tourist draw for the Bradford district. For minimal short term gain, people who commit these crimes throw away hundreds of years of history.” (Dolores Cowburn)

Onto another Church as John Huxley, on Twitter, reports that,

End in sight for Haworth Church roof repair 1st stage. Now for the 2nd stage fund raising!

Click here to see a picture of the work in progress.

Still locally, and on a lighter note, The Telegraph and Argus has received a (humorous) letter from a reader concerning the 'al fresco love' supposedly going on at a car park on the moors in Haworth.

SIR – When I was young, Shipley Glen was a magnet for fans of ‘alfresco love’, now a national newspaper claims that lust-crazed couples are invading the moors around the Parish of Haworth (T&A, October 9).
Police said they had received no reports of the activity in the area, nor had any councillor.
Haworth Parish Council chairman John Huxley said it looks like a figment of somebody’s imagination, but I believe these goings on were known to all and sundry in 1847 when Emily Brontë wrote her single novel Wuthering Heights, an intense and powerful tale of love. And who knows, parts of this acclaimed work could be empirical.
D Rhodes, Croscombe Walk, Bradford

Back to the latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Word and Film discusses skin colour and films.

And while color-blind casting in Hollywood, or filling a role irrespective of an actor’s ethnicity as in David Thomson’s example of Morgan Freeman as the white Iago or the dark-skinned Othello might have some catching up to do with Broadway, this year is one of strides from Idris Elba playing a Norse God in Thor to Andrea Arnold casting an unknown, twenty-year-old black actor as the “dark-skinned gypsy” Heathcliff in her adaptation of “Wuthering Heights.” (Tony Phillips)

A columnist from The Gulf Today acknowledges the fact that books make and change you.

I am not into poems, yet the biggest influence on my humdrum life has been some lines from Shelley, Whitman and Iqbal. Again, I would have been a different guy if I had not read Wuthering Heights, Tess of the D’urbervilles, Crime and Punishment and The Cherry Orchard.
Camus and Kafka see us like we should be, the above see us the way we are. And that works for me. (Shaadaab S Bakht)

Writer Susan Isaacs briefly discusses Jane Eyre on Salon:

It’s not all Jane Eyre out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she’s one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous. And some are just plain bad – somewhere between nasty and bad to the bone.

The Phoenix Events Examiner wonders what people are reading in October, which is National Book Month.

My favorite books as a child were "Nina Grant Pediatric Nurse" by Patti Stone, "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë, and "The Blue-nosed Witch" by Margaret Emery, even when it wasn't Halloween season. (S. Renee Greene)

And in El País (Spain) Fernando Savater makes a point of the fact that all literature written by women is not always 'just' women's literature.

La buena literatura no tiene sexo, ni siquiera género, pero cuando la escribe una mujer siempre será bautizada como literatura femenina. Y se le asignarán rasgos idiosincrásicos que la cargan de un punto exótico, como si llegase desde un continente casi inexplorado. Pero ¿son acaso las buenas escritoras indígenas de un continente desconocido por los varones, lleno de zonas en blanco en las que solo pone “aquí hay leones”? Así parece haber sido, desde Madame de Lafayette y Jane Austen, pasando por las Brontë, George Sand o la maravillosa Emily Dickinson, hasta comienzos del siglo XX. Pero entonces llegó Virginia Woolf, seguida luego por Simone de Beauvoir, y el espectro en camisón de lo femenino en literatura se convirtió en una antigualla más bien risible, como el fantasma de Canterville. Creer que esa denominación nos ayudará a entender mejor las obras de Silvina Ocampo y Marguerite Yourcenar, o las de Agatha Christie, J.K. Rowling o Fred Vargas, suena ahora un punto ridículo y hasta absurdo. (Translation)

L'Esprit Vagabond writes in French about Anne Brontë ad her last days at Scarborough. Zielono w głowie... reviews Shirley in Polish. Namefreak! posts about Juliet Gael's Romancing Miss Brontë and Marikas bokdagbok (in Swedish) writes about Rachel Ferguson's The Brontës Went to Woolworths. The Sequined World recommends Jane Eyre 2011.