Heathcliff: a depressive alpha male

The ticket desk at the Brontë Parsonage Museum might be moved next year, according to The Telegraph and Argus.

Improvements are planned at one of the Bradford district’s biggest tourist attractions.
The ticket desk at the entrance to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth could be moved.
Ann Dinsdale (pictured), collections manager at the parsonage, said: “The ticket desk is right at the front door, so people have to queue outside and the weather is not always great! Also, there is only space for one person to man the desk. The idea is to move it into the foyer area, which will enable people to wait inside, and it will mean that at busy times we can have more than one person issuing tickets.”
If the plans are approved by Bradford Council, it is hoped to carry out the work in January.

The Telegraph and Argus also reports that Bradford Council is planning some cuts, but they won't affect the public toilet near the museum.

The Labour group would close all public toilets, except those in “high traffic tourist areas” which include City Park and City Hall, Brook Street, Ilkley, Brontë Parsonage and Saltaire. (Hannah Postles)

The Times's Leading Article of today talks about Yorkshire being third at the latest Lonely Planet's Best in Travel best region in the world ranking:

Really, though, an injustice has been done. Charming though Sikkim and The Kimberley no doubt are, do they boast an Andrew Marvell, a bunch of Brontës, an Alan Bennett or a Ted Hughes?

Janice Turner adds in the same newspaper:

South Yorkshire is neither the wild West Yorkshire of the Brontës' moors nor the refined North Yorkshire of Harrogate's spas and tearooms. It is - was, alas - the county's engine room. (...)
I love Scarborough, but despite its nickname, it's no "Brighton of the North". It's a saltier, less effete, more cussed town. The Yorkshire countryside is more the untamed, rain-lashed place of Heathcliff's wandering than the cosy hills of Last of the Summer Wine.

Via The New Yorker's Page Turner we have found a recent Poetry Foundation article on literary siblings.

For years, a tiny pub on the road between the English villages of Haworth and Keighley has been home to a peculiar rumor. The Cross Roads Inn was one of Branwell Brontë’s favorite haunts. It was at the Cross Roads that two of Branwell’s friends claim he read from a manuscript that featured the characters who would later appear in the novel Wuthering Heights.
Despite Charlotte Brontë’s insistence that her sister Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, the rumor that their brother Branwell penned the novel has persisted. In their various biographies, Juliet Barker, Daphne du Maurier, Lucasta Miller, and Fannie Elizabeth Ratchford all considered the possibility that Branwell was the true author of Wuthering Heights. Barker claimed to have identified a story of Branwell’s that influenced the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff; du Maurier pointed to poems written by Emily and Branwell as evidence of an early collaboration between the two that could have blossomed into Wuthering Heights.
The persistence of the rumor reflects the curious, cloistered upbringing of the Brontës, but also the more universal experience of siblings. Collaboration and competition between brothers and sisters exists no matter their vocations, but literary siblings challenge our assumptions of lonely genius, isolated writers alone at their desks. Patrick Brontë, father to the four artists, who raised them himself after their mother died, wrote: “As they had few opportunities of being in learned and polished society, in their retired country situation, they formed a little society amongst themselves—with which they seem’d content and happy.” (Casey N. Cep) (Read more)

AARP lists '21 Great Novels It's Worth Finding Time to Read' and among them is

10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Nathaniel Hawthorne hated the Misses Brontë, because they could do what he could not — write books that sing with authenticity and genuine suspense, and do so nearly 200 years later. (Jacquelyn Mitchard)

While BlogLive (Italy) selects the ten best alpha males in literature.

3. Heathcliff – da Cime Tempestose di Emily Brontë (genere: gotico, romance) – “Forse il mio primo eroe alpha, grazie alla mia insegnante di inglese per avermelo fatto scoprire tanti anni fa”. (Jill Shalvis) (Translation)

A columnist from The Daily Pennsylvanian highlights a rather different aspect of Heathcliff.

Sadness has its hecklers, too. But there’s a perverse glamorization of being down in the dumps that doesn’t exist for the truly content. Just look at Heathcliff or Batman or Daria. Would anyone like those characters if they were a little more upbeat? (Rachel Del Valle)

The Boar mentions the influences of singer Lydia Baylis.

“This next song is based on a John Dryden poem.” It’s clear from this introduction that Lydia Baylis isn’t your average performer. Following Lucy Mason‘s Coffee House Session of a fortnight ago, this latest Curiositea performance sticks to the same formula: one café, one guitar, and one outstanding voice. In many ways, though, Baylis is a very different artist to the Australian Mason. And with Virginia Woolf and the Brontë sisters among the Welsh singer’s other sources of inspiration, there’s a distinctly cerebral edge to her work, which she describes as “dark cinematic pop” during her post-gig interview with Boar Music. (Sam Carter)

El Faro de Vigo (Spain) looks at the local British colony established there in 1873.

La afición a la buena lectura, con autores literarios de moda como Charles Dickens, las hermanas Brontë o Lewis Carroll comienzan a tener también adeptos entre los jóvenes vigueses. Era costumbre en estos autores publicar sus novelas por capítulos mensuales en revistas, siendo esperadas con auténtica ansiedad por los jóvenes británicos asentados en la urbe. (José Ramón Cabanelas) (Translation)

The Vancouver Courier reviews the stage production Armstrong's War.

A recent graduate of U. Vic’s acting program, Byskov makes his Vancouver stage debut in Armstrong’s War, too. As a wounded Afghanistan war hero, Byskov is initially intense, angry and in denial about his mental state. What Michael does not need is a terminally chirpy, cheerful kid in pigtails reading teenaged mysteries or Wuthering Heights to him. (Jo Ledingham)

While the Missoula Independent recommends the local production of The Woman in Black.

 If you love Wuthering Heights or any other eerie old-timey book/BBS television series, you'll dig this. (Erika Fredrickson)

The Rhode Island Public Radio tells the story of a local medical center:

Their only hope: find a buyer willing to help turn the hospital around. And, like a country gentleman’s daughter in a Brontë novel, Landmark flirted with several suitors. There was Caritas Christi. RegionalCare Hospital Partners. Transition Healthcare. HealthSouth. Capella. Prime. None made it past the early hurdles.
Rhode Island’s Hospital Conversions Act requires state approval to turn a nonprofit hospital into a for-profit one. The process derailed a few deals. Delay followed delay. Hopes rose. Hopes fell.
Then, the most serious offer to-date came from the for-profit outfit Steward. But a bitter and public fight broke out between Steward and insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island over the contract with Landmark. And Steward backed out at the last minute, too. But finally, like that heroine in a Brontë novel, it turned out that one of Landmark’s first suitors was the one all along: Prime Healthcare. Landmark president Richard Charest. (Kristin Gourlay)

Twaddle and Lisa Richards: Rock N' Roll Politics discuss Wuthering Heights, the latter deeming it 'The Best Unromantic Novel About Domestic Abuse and Greedy Revenge'. Reading Log posts about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Entre montones de libros writes in Spanish about Agnes Grey. Also in Spanish, Curistoria posts about the rejection letters received by Charlotte Brontë. Wordpixelsblog discusses Justine Picardie's novel Daphne.