Endurance, Perseverance, Industry, Talent

Menna van Praag writes in The Huffington Post about her book The House at the End of Hope Street:

All of us have dreams but not all of us fulfill them, so what does it take to transform your life? Are there particular traits successful people have that ensure their success? Is talent more important than tenacity? What about courage, self-belief, passion and will-power? [...]
The House at the End of Hope Street is a magical place, a refuge for women who've lost hope of ever fulfilling their dreams. They are allowed to stay for 99 Days -- just long enough to transform their lives but not too long to procrastinate -- while receiving support from the spirits of the famous women who populate the house. These women, Virginia Woolf, George Elliot, Charlotte Brontë and Florence Nightingale among them, had a great deal of inspiring ideas about how to best fulfill your dreams and transform your life. [...]
"I honor endurance, perseverance, industry, talent." -- Charlotte Brontë
Whatever you want to achieve never underestimate the power of simply never giving up and, while you're doing it, always keeping your word with yourself. It's an essential practice, the difference between actually fulfilling your dreams, or just talking about them for the rest of your life . . .

Careful, though, as those are St John Rivers's words. However, if ever there was someone who 'never underestimated the power of simply never giving up' that was St John for sure.

The Telegraph reviews the new BBC series The Village:

All this misery is not necessarily to be attacked. King Lear lacks the tinkle of light laughter and the joy of pretty frocks, and so does Wuthering Heights, from which The Village derives part of its ethos. Both are great works of art, with large followings. (Charles Moore)

Daily Express has several writers tell about their wedding. Here's a fragment from Wendy Holden's account:

The church of St Peter's in Hartshead, West Yorkshire, sits square-towered and solid on a windy moor top. A thousand-year-old yew stands in its graveyard; a worn stone path leads to its low, arched door. As wedding locations go, it is straight from central casting. I was married here on May 15, 1993, 20 years ago this year.
I had grown up locally and knew the church well.
I loved its romantic, ancient appearance and the fact that Patrick Brontë, father of the famous writing sisters, had once been the vicar here. he had lived in the large old stone house a few miles away that now belonged to my best school friend's family and in which I had spent almost all my spare time.
The vicar who married Jon and me was every bit as amazing as his august predecessor. He had the wonderful name of Jesse van der Valk and was even more exciting and theatrical than he sounds.

Helen MacEwan writes in the Brussels Brontë Blog about Sheila Hancock's Perspectives and about viewing Charlotte Brontë's letters to Constantin Heger privately at the British Library. The Young Folks reviews Jane Eyre 1944.