An exciting exhibition

Keighley News features the new temporary exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum: The Brontës, War and Waterloo.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum will this weekend launch a new exhibition about the battle of Waterloo.
The Haworth museum is commemorating the 200th anniversary of the battle by focusing on its links with the Brontë family.
The Brontës, War and Waterloo explores the Brontë family’s fascination with war and how the bloody battles and heroic figureheads of the Napoleonic conflicts captivated and inspired the collective Brontë siblings.
Ann Dinsdale, the museum’s collections manager, accepted that the Napoleonic conflicts took place far away from the moors of Yorkshire but said the Brontës had access to military accounts in periodicals and newspapers.
She said: “Their imaginations were fuelled by what they read and they recreated events with toy soldiers, transforming the Napoleonic campaigns into exciting fantasy sagas.
“This is an exciting exhibition which shows how this fascination with war and warfare continued into adulthood and influenced their writing.”
The exhibition has been curated with the assistance of Brontë scholar Emma Butcher, who believes the exhibition brings new insight to the Brontë story.
She said: “The violent, masculine landscapes of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre can be traced back to the Brontës’ early engagement with militarism and warfare.
“This exhibition presents the work of the Brontë siblings in a new light and establishes them as significant post-war authors.”
Items displayed as part of the exhibition include a fragment of Napoleon’s coffin that was given to Charlotte Brontë while she was in Brussels, and a letter to Patrick Brontë from the Duke of Wellington.
There is also a fragment from Charlotte Brontë’s History of the Year 1829 which recounts the moment when Branwell showed his new toy soldiers to his sisters.
The Brontës, War and Waterloo opens in the Bonnell Room at the Bronte Parsonage Museum on Monday. (March 16). The current exhibition The Brontës and Animals finishes today.
Entrance to the new exhibition is free with the price of museum admission. (David Knights)

The Telegraph and Argus has a nice story related to the 1920s silent film version of Wuthering Heights.

Two Yorkshire sisters had a special treat when they visited the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth and took a trip back in time to their mother’s childhood stardom.
Jill Freeman and Anne Powell are the daughters of Florence ‘Twinks’ Hunter, the Yorkshire-born actress who played young Cathy in the 1920s silent film production of Wuthering Heights.
Last year, the Bronte Society acquired the full script of Albert Victor Bramble’s 1920s production which includes 22 pages of director’s notes including details of costumes and locations.
The script, together with original stills showing the film crew and members of the cast, are now on display to the public, but Mrs Freeman and Mrs Powell made an appointment to view it at close quarters in the Museum Library.
"It’s just wonderful to see these pages detailing what mum had to do. There is no surviving copy of the film, but this script gives us a glimpse of what it might have been like," said Mrs Powell.
Mrs Freeman added: "It’s very special to see this and imagine our mother as a six-year-old actress."Florence Hunter was one of the most successful child stars of the early British film industry.
She became known as Twinks after her screen billing of Baby Twinkles. She died in Ripon in January 2000.
Rebecca Yorke, communications officer at the Museum, said: "One of the central aims of the Brontë Society is to share its world class collection with people of all ages and from all over the world.”

Town Topics discusses Downton Abbey:

After speculating on who among the characters in Downton Abbey might actually be writing the story, my choice is Lord Grantham’s perennially embattled valet Bates. He’s the only person on the premises who seems capable of it. I like to imagine him doing a Frankenstein and turning on Fellowes, his sadistic creator. He has good reason to feel abused. It’s hard to think of two more ill-fated beings than Bates and Anna, and all Fellowes can say when asked about the sufferings he imposes on them is “I think in life there are people who are unlucky — the bread always falls with the butter side down.”
That Fellowes resorts to that dinner table phrase in defense of his plotting says something about what keeps Downton Abbey from true greatness. Imagine Charlotte Brontë descending to the Fellowes rationale to justify the plight of Jane Eyre and Rochester. (Stuart Mitchner)

The Manchester Evening News has an idea for the Coronation Street producers:

Kooky singer Kate Bush could play Gary's mum Anna rather well. We can imagine her trilling a haunting rendition of Wuthering Heights while making the brews and serving up bacon butties at Roy's Rolls. (Katie Fitzpatrick)

Rosie Amber reviews Luccia  Gray's All Hallows at Eyre Hall.