A lasting memory for Haworth

The Tour de France's arrival in Yorkshire is less than a week away and the Yorkshire Post takes a peek at a new sculpture that will be unveiled on Saturday in Haworth.

When it came to marking the Tour de France passing through his village, money was no object for Yorkshire sculptor Craig Dyson.
The 23-year-old, from Haworth, used more than 26,000 2p coins to create a work of art designed to provide a lasting legacy of the visit of the Grand Départ this weekend.
It has been six months in the making for Mr Dyson, who made a public appeal for tuppences to help make his design a reality.
The overwhelming response stretched worldwide and the result – a 20ft-high spherical sculpture with coins from as far afield as Canada and China – will be on proud display outside Haworth Central Park when the county welcomes the race. [...]
A penny farthing bike will be suspended inside the sphere when it is officially unveiled in the life-long home of the Brontë family as Stage One gets under way this Saturday.
The sphere will welcome
riders and visitors alike when
the route passes through Haworth during Stage Two on Sunday.
While cyclists taking part in the world’s biggest bike race might be too busy tackling the to cobbled terrain and historic climb up Haworth’s iconic Main Street to pay much attention to the sphere, turning the heads of sporting stars was never the aim of the project.
Mr Dyson said: “This was about creating a lasting memory for Haworth.”
So far, the sculpture has cost Mr Dyson £8,000 from his own pocket.
Mr Dyson hopes to sell it back to the people of Haworth so that it becomes a community-owned piece of art on permanent display.
He said: “A lot of pieces of public art are owned by councils or arts organisations. I don’t want that – I can’t when people have handed over their 2ps.

The Irish Times interviews writer Mary Morrissy.

What was your favourite book as a child? Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. (Martin Doyle)

The Irish Times also has an article on getting a sense of place in books such as

The humidity of Faulkner’s south; the moors of Wuthering Heights; the leafy lanes of John McGahern’s novels. Reading a story with an ingrained sense of setting is almost like walking its landscape. A novelist who can locate a reader in a very specific place can offer an immersive experience. (Sinead Gleeson)

Periodistas en español (Spain) features a new exhibition of Victorian paintings at the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum in Madrid and tells about the historic context:

La literatura de la era victoriana es fuertemente crítica con todos los estamentos sociales: Charles Dickens que con su Oliver Twist hizo una crítica mordaz del trabajo y maltrato infantil en 1838. Las hermanas Brontë, Lewis Carroll, el famoso matemático autor de Alicia, Herbert G. Wellssiempre recordado por La guerra de los mundos, Oscar Wilde víctima de la Ley contra actos indecentes entre hombres, el Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle, uno de los padres de la novela detectivesca, Bram Stoker creador del siempre vigente Drácula, Robert L. Stevenson o la ciencia al servicio de la aventura, Charles Darwin al que aún hoy en día hay quien le discute El origen de las especies, y varios etcs.. En todos ellos está presente el ideal de progreso científico, económico, social, tecnológico. (Teresa Fernandez Herrera) (Translation)

Sylire writes in French about a French audiobook of Wuthering Heights. Animal my soul posts about Wide Sargasso Sea. Helen MacEwan gives a complete report of the recent Brontë Society weekend on the Brussels Brontë Blog.