The Importance of Words

The Daily Express gives tips to help your children read and love 'quality' literature:

Like most girls her age, my daughter has devoured the exploits of Tracy Beaker, Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen and assorted teenage dystopian heroines dripping in vampire blood, but has so far proved completely resistant to the pull of the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen and Treasure Island.  We struggled through The Secret Garden together as bedtime reading (a beautifully illustrated edition helped with this), but abandoned Treasure Island and What Katy Did. (Rachel Carlyle)

Also in The Sunday Express we read an interview with Margaret O'Brien (who was Adèle in Jane Eyre 1944):

My favourite memories come from filming Meet Me [In Saint Louis] and Little Women. I also loved shooting the famous books: Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden. I was about six or seven when I learned to speak French for my role in Jane Eyre and it was the first time I worked with Elizabeth Taylor. Later, we did Little Women together. (Tiffany Rose)

The Lincoln Journal Star covers a local Poetry Out Loud competition:

Cristian Castro-Brizendine sat a few seats away, awaiting the performance of his final piece, “Shall Earth no more inspire thee” by Emily Brontë. This was his first year in the competition, though the senior from Omaha South has been on stage for years. He was trying to focus. To calm the shaking of his hands and to drown out the pulse of his heartbeat in his ears.
But once he was on stage, he stopped focusing on the judges, the audience members, the trophies behind him. He just felt the words and the emotion of the poem.
That’s the power of poetry to him. “It’s not about me,” Castro-Brizendine said. “It’s not about my performance; it’s about the voice and the importance of the words. That’s really what Poetry Out Loud teaches you -- to focus on the poem and value the voices of poets that might not otherwise get heard.”  (Mara Klecker)

Amber Rudd MP writes in Hastings & St. Leonard's Observer:

There are now more women in work than ever before – and they stand at the heart of this country’s economic growth.
Let me start with a quotation by Charlotte Brontë, given to me by my daughter:
“If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed….”

The Star (Malaysia) reviews Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight:

What’s more, Good Morning, Midnight has made me greatly anticipate a reading of her better-known Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), a story told from the point of view of the mad wife in Jane Eyre. (Sharmilla Ganesan)

Público (Portugal) interviews the actress, singer and writer Myriam Anissimov:

Myriam, a rapariga que “dormia com os homens sem sentir qualquer amor”, sonhava amar. “Queria amar como Mathilde de La Mole amava Julien Sorel. Como Catherine Earnshaw amava Heathcliff. Como Anna Karenina amava Vronsky.” Naquele comboio ainda não podia saber, mas seria cantora, actriz, jornalista, fotógrafa, escritora e biógrafa de Primo Levi, Romain Gary e Vasily Grossman. (Isabel Lucas) (Translation)

Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) reviews a local production of Selma Lagerlöf's Gösta Berlings Saga:

Gösta Berling: en så märklig blandning av engelsk romantik och tysk Sturm-und-Drang. En Heathcliff, en Faust, en Don Juan och en Kristusgestalt. Selma Lagerlöf låter honom vara utan föräldrar och anor, en man som söker sitt spår medan han förför, lider och förilar sig. Det är en passionerad moralitet och ett klassdrama där människor stiger och faller. Ett verk skapat av en lesbisk, låghalt lärarinna som vuxit upp med en försupen far och en stark mor.  (Lars Ring) (Translation)

Tanya Gold mentions Bridget Christie's Brontës sketch in The Sunday Times. Finally, an alert for today on BBC Radio 3:

Words and Music. BBC Radio 3.  5:30 PM 

Look to the Skies

Music, poetry and prose which gaze at the sky and the objects in it. Readings by Emilia Fox and Anthony Calf
Producer Harry Parker.
The sky as place of escape, for bluebirds if not for us, is sung simply and effectively in the impromptu version of 'Over the Rainbow' by the late Hawaiian ukulele star Israel Kamakawiwo'ole while it is larks again that provide the soundtrack to Emily Bronte's description of heavenly happiness from 'Wuthering Heights'.