Haworth: International Shop Window for Yorkshire

The Telegraph & Argus vibrates with the endless prosperity to be brought by the Tour de France stage in Yorkshire and connects it to the minor restoration works at the Old Schoolroom and Main Street in Haworth:

Work to restore parts of picturesque Haworth to their original glory has been completed – and the village is now hoping for a tourism boost from the upcoming Tour De France cycle race next year.
Easter visitors to Haworth will be able to see the results of recent work to restore key parts of the historic village.
English Heritage and Bradford Council have joined forces to invest in four restoration projects.
The work, combined with the fact the village is on the route of the Tour De France next year, could act as a double boost in terms of attracting visitors to the scenic Worth Valley.
The Old School Room, designed and built by Patrick Brontë in 1832, has had new windows installed to match the original Georgian Gothic design.
Two businesses in Main Street have also had original features such as windows and shop fronts restored.
The improvements are designed to bring the village closer to how the Brontes knew it, and to ensure it continues to thrive as a tourist destination.
A spokesman for English Heritage said the enhancements complement the Bradford Council-funded repair of the setts in Main Street and Church Street, as well as Heritage Lottery Fund support for repairs to Haworth Parish Church.
Trevor Mitchell, English Heritage planning and conservation director for Yorkshire, said: “Haworth is an international shop window for Yorkshire’s heritage and its tourism industry and we want people to see it at its best.
“These small-scale works show that normal maintenance and repair projects can make a big difference to the quality of the village when they are well detailed.”
A grant of £42,000 has been given from English Heritage and £11,000 from the district council to reinstate original features and shop fronts on Main Street, at numbers 125 and 127, close to the parsonage and church.
The Old School Room is a Grade II listed building, and a grant of £9,000 each from English Heritage and Bradford Council has allowed the five main windows on its south side to be replaced with small-paned sash windows.
Councillor Val Slater, the Council’s executive member for housing, planning and transport, said: “Haworth is a fantastic place for people to visit and these improvements will add to that attraction.”
Averil Kenyon, chairman of Brontë Spirit – the committee tasked with saving the Old School Room – said: “We’re delighted with the new windows, and they will make a big difference to the look of the building and allow much more light to the inside.
“When we have the doors and the other windows painted to match, the Church Street side of this building will be more pleasant to the eye.”

The Telegraph highlights ITV's Perspectives this Sunday:

Perspectives: Sheila Hancock – the Brilliant Brontë Sisters
ITV, 10.00pm
The history of the three novelist sisters is a well worn one, but in the latest episode of this documentary strand, actress Shelia Hancock shows such a visceral response to their work that she makes you appreciate them afresh. Her relationship to Wuthering Heights is particularly passionate. “I have felt all the feelings that are in that book – particularly the sense of loss and desperation and luckily for me great love,” she says. (Telegraph TV Desk)

And on Channel 4, the programme Walking Through History (March 29, 8:00 pm) will feature Haddon Hall tonight:

Tomorrow, the Peak District is the uncredited star of BBC1’s new period drama The Village. Tonight, it’s the backdrop for the first of a new series where Tony Robinson rambles through historic landscapes to soak up stories from Britain’s past. Robinson is usually excellent at this sort of thing and the series promises to reveal hidden stories that ordinary walkers might easily miss.  (...)
 1/4. Tony Robinson embarks on expeditions through some of Britain's most historic landscapes in search of the richest stories from the nation's past. He begins with a 40-mile walk along the Derwent Valley in the Peak District, where the world's industrial revolution was born. En route he visits the sleepy village of Cromford to find out about the work of entrepreneur Richard Arkwright, and stops off at a 900-year-old stately home that has been used as the location for three Jane Eyre films. (Radio Times)

Dave Astor writes in The Huffington Post about bad fictional marriages:

Then there's the wonderful Jane Eyre novel I often mention. In the back story of Charlotte Bronte's book, a young Rochester is sort of tricked into marrying Bertha despite hardly knowing her and being unaware of her hereditary tendency to go mad. Lesson: Google the person you might wed, even if you live long before the Internet was invented.

Courier Life's Brooklyn Daily talks about a lit-focused singles night in Brooklyn:

High school nerds, take heart — grow up, move to Brooklyn, and you will no longer be forever alone.
That’s the ethos behind Geek Love, a singles mixer and trivia night for brainy literary types hosted by gleefully geeky writers Emma Straub and Teddy Wayne.
Conversations about favorite Brontë sisters are likely to abound. (Jaime Lutz)

A fan of Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices book series writes on Hypable about her own story with reading:

For awhile, the girl found her way on her own. Harry Potter introduced her to the world of classical literature, and her awareness grew. As did her burden. She found friends in Austen, Brontë, Carroll, Shakespeare and more. High School introduced her to Dickens, Wilde, Spencer, Wordsworth, Shelley, Pope, and her beloved Augustine. But they came after. (SnatcherGirl)

Keighley News tells the story of local painter Graham Foster:

An Oakworth man who temporarily lost the sight in one eye has taken up painting again following surgery.
Graham Foster is currently exhibiting his pictures of Yorkshire landscapes at Haworth Tourist Information Centre [until April 6]. (...)
He particularly likes to paint dry stone walls, reflecting the many years he spent building them across the north.
He said: “They’re not strictly speaking photographic images, they’re more impressions of the Brontë landscapes.
“We think it’s wonderful natural landscape but it’s not – the fields are there for cultivation, the moors are there because people cut down trees.”

Mania reviews The Host, both film and novel:

Stephenie Meyer is worse than a bad writer. She’s an anti-writer. At least bad writing features things like conflict and rising action: hackneyed, silly or poorly rendered perhaps, but by God things happen in bad writing. Meyer’s writing, on the other hand, is specifically designed to remove all of that. In my mind’s eye, I imagine her strapping good concepts down to a mad scientist’s table, and draining them of their dramatic potential as they shriek in agony. What if she gets a hold of the classics?! Can you fathom Lady Macbeth mooning about who loves her the most for five unbearable acts, or a blank-faced Heathcliff mumbling Hallmark platitudes to Catherine for hour after agonizing hour? That’s anti-writing: a black hole pulling everything beautiful and decent about the creative process into its ravenous maw. (Rob Vaux)

The Dayton Daily News publishes about the Ohio Poetry Out Loud competition:

Taribo Osuobeni, a senior at Westerville Central High School in Westerville, has won the top award and will receive an all-expenses paid trip to the national finals in Washington, D.C., from April 28-30. He also won a $300 prize and $500 for his school. Osuobeni won with his recitation of “On Quitting” by Edgar Ellen Guest; “No Coward Soul is Mine” by Emily Bronteë and “The Craftsman” by Marcus B. Christian. (Meredith Moss)

WDR3 (Germany) reviews the Ilka Saal and Gerhard Wolf Wuthering Heights radio adaptation recently released in CD:

Schon dutzende Male ist die Geschichte seit Stummfilmzeiten ins Kino gekommen, jetzt gibt es auch eine Hörspielfassung aus dem Hörverlag, mit den Stimmen namhafter Schauspieler wie Bibiana Beglau, Alexander Fehling und Jule Böwe.Entstanden ist ein sehr atmosphärisches Stimmungsbild mit Musik und der Rezitation von Gedichten von Emily Brontë im englischen Original. (Ulrike Gondorf) (Translation)

Booking in Heels reviews Wide Sargasso Sea; TrekEarth publishes a picture of the path leading to Wycoller Hall; Celebrations of a Writer posts about Wuthering Heights; Library of Clean Reads reviews Jude Morgan's Charlotte & Emily (aka The Taste of Sorrow); Somewhere Only We Know... posts about Jane Eyre; Daisy Doll continues posting about her Jane Eyre project, now Rochester's shirt; My New Plaid Pants reviews Wuthering Heights 2011.