Special Atmosphere

On ABC Radio (Australia) today

Great Lovers: Oscar and Bosie, Catherine and HeathcliffDecember 25, Friday 1pm
Presented by Michael Mackenzie

It's surely the most puzzling and enigmatic of great love stories.
Emily Brontë may have led a sheltered life but the dark passions at Wuthering Heights owe much to the 19th century Romantic imagination, especially Byron and Shelley.

You can read the transcript here or listen to the audio here:

No if you've read Wuthering Heights or seen one of the film versions of it, or even if you haven't, you'll still probably know about Cathy and Heathcliff. They grow up as brother and sister. Heathcliff is a homeless child who Catherine’s father has brought into the Earnshaw family. Years pass, and in something of a surprise move, the grown-up Catherine decides to marry Edgar Linton, who's the nice chap from up the road, at which point the wild and rough Heathcliff runs away. When Heathcliff eventually comes back, he's transformed. He’s a dignified and wealthy man, although as Emily Brontë writes, his eyes are still 'full of black fire'. Heathcliff marries Edgar's sister Isabella, although he doesn't love her. Then Catherine dies in childbirth and leaves Heathcliff grieving and tormented. He pays out on the rest of the family for the next twenty years. (...)

New Statesman lists the best poems of the year published in the magazine. Including one by Benjamin Myers, author of Heathcliff Adrift:

On approaching Pendle Hill

The path up to Pendle. The sleeping beast. The purple skies.

Folk tell of witches burned or branded or drowned or hung

up there. They tell of failed crops, stillborn calves, murrain.

Always the women. Always the witches. Never the men.

Never the frost, never mastitis or scours or footrot; never

blackthorn or angel trumpet, hemlock, ragwort or lupine.

Never in drink or lust or fear or guilt. Never in penance or

madness. It’s always the women. It’s always the witches.

The path past Pendle. The buried bones. The violaceous skies.

Published in the NS of 24 April 2015. Benjamin Myers’s novels in-clude Pig Iron and Beast-ings. “On Approaching Pendle Hill” features in his collection Heathcliff Adrift (New Writing North).

A Christmas quiz in the Belleville News-Democrat:

A Familiar Ring.
4. Who are Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell better known as? (Roger Schlueter)

 This journalist of the Hindustan Times is now a fan of Star Wars (and maybe Jane Eyre):

Readers, I will tell you the truth (catch the Jane Eyre reference? I always wanted to try that). I watched The Force Awakens just two hours before this one and hence you can imagine why I was not interested in keeping awake for Episode III. If you remember, in my last piece I said that I can feel a Force awakening with me and now, after Episode VII, I can tell without a sliver of doubt that I have joined the Star Wars side. (Soumya Srivastava)

Northern Soul lists places to visit in the ... well,  you guessed it, in the North:

Brontë Parsonage Museum, West Yorkshire
For a real step-back-in-time moment, this is one of the best. The studies and bedrooms of the Brontë sisters and their family are presented as they would have been when they lived here in the 1800s. It’s a unique place with a special atmosphere, especially if you’re a fan of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre or Emily’s Wuthering Heights. And if you go as part of a group tour, they let you look behind the scenes (closed for January though). (Helen Nugent)

Lunch Ticket posts about Jane Eyre.  Candy Reads recommends the National Theatre's adaptation of the novel by Charlotte Brontë.