New signs for Top Withens

Sally Wainwright speaks to Radio Times and mentions To Walk Invisible:

Presumably she makes regular trips north, to top up. “Oh yes, I love coming back up here [she’s speaking from the old Granada studios where the set for her new feature-length BBC1 drama about the Brontë sisters, To Walk Invisible, is being built]. What I really like is being able to move between different worlds."
Wainwright, who early in her career worked on The Archers, is writing a series of Last Tango in Halifax and her Brontës drama, due on BBC1 some time this year. She’ll be directing it, too. As this is Wainwright, To Walk Invisible won’t be a chocolate-box retelling of Charlotte, Emily and Anne’s story. “I’m going to show it like it was, really grim. I think it will surprise people with the truth of what their lives were like. The Brontë Society keeps the Parsonage [now a museum] incredibly spick-and-span. But one of the things we are trying to do is to show how bleak it was in Haworth, which had no proper sanitation.” (Alison Graham)

Keighley News reports that the warning signs at Top Withins are being changed for signs that will blend more into the surroundings.

Bright blue safety signs installed next to Haworth's historic Top Withens ruins are to be replaced following a public outcry.
Yorkshire Water confirmed this week that following a largely negative reaction to the three signs – as revealed in last week's Keighley News – it has listened to public demand and will replace them with notices more in keeping with the scenic landscape. [...]
A Yorkshire Water spokesman said: "The signs will be replaced with alternatives that blend more sympathetically into their Brontë country setting.
"The new signs will be co-designed by the Brontë Society and Yorkshire Water, with the promise they will be more in keeping with the rural area."
The news has provoked a delighted reaction from councillors and members of the public who had hit out at the existing signs' siting and appearance. They argued they detract from the remote, atmospheric setting of the ruined farmhouse building.
Stanbury resident, Lesley O'Brien, who had contacted Yorkshire Water to suggest how these safety warnings could be designed more sensitively, thanked the company for responding positively to people's concerns.
"I'm delighted Yorkshire Water has engaged with the local community and taken on board the concerns raised," she said.
Worth Valley ward councillor, Glen Miller, said: "I welcome this news and I wait to see the outcome of the discussions between Yorkshire Water and the Brontë Society.
"I also think Bradford Council's rights of way department should be involved because it does have experience in this area."
Fellow Worth Valley ward councillor, Russell Brown, said parts of the walls of Top Withens are unstable, so the new signs still need to be visible enough to warn visitors of the potential danger.
The current signs were put up to warn people not to sit or climb on the ruins of Top Withens due to the risk of injury from loose stones.
The company's spokesman added: "We recognise there has been some negative responses to these well-intentioned safety signs, so we are pleased to say we will work with the Brontë Society to change them.
"The new signs will be carefully designed so they blend in better with their location, and we hope to unveil them as soon as possible.
"This is an area we are proud to be associated with, and the new signs will celebrate the area by informing passers-by of the building’s famous links with the Brontë sisters.”
A Brontë Society spokesman said: “Although the association of Top Withens with Wuthering Heights from Emily Brontë’s novel of the same name is a loose one, we recognise that for many people the site holds a special significance.
"The Brontë Society is delighted to be working with Yorkshire Water to help them produce signs that are more sympathetic to this inspirational landscape.” (Miran Rahman)

Keighley News also has an article on the recent #JaneandMe campaign on Twitter.

A Twitter campaign is encouraging people to post ‘selfies’ of themselves with their copies of Jane Eyre.
The campaign – #Janeandme – was launched last week by novelist Jane [sic] Chevalier, as part of the celebrations for the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth.
Brontë Parsonage Museum staff said the campaign is already a huge success, with #Janeandme and #Bronte200 trending on Twitter for several hours on Friday.
Photographs were posted by leading authors, including Jacqueline Wilson, Sarah Waters and Bradford’s Michael Stewart, as well as by museum staff.
Brontë enthusiasts also joined in the fun from as far afield as the USA, New Zealand, Italy, Belgium and Spain, while institutions took part, such as the National Media Museum, the Foundling Museum and National Portrait Gallery.
Marketing and communications officer, Rebecca Yorke, said staff were overwhelmed by the response to the #Janeandme campaign.
She added: “Charlotte is clearly loved and respected by readers near, and far and it was wonderful to see pictures of treasured copies of Jane Eyre being posted from all around the world.” (David Knights)

Observador (Portugal) features Wuthering Heights.

Escrever sobre o que quer que seja implica sempre uma certa familiaridade com o objecto de que se pretende falar. Se pretender descrever, por exemplo, um animal feroz que só existe no Nepal terei que, para poder ser compreendido, relacioná-lo de alguma forma com coisas que me sejam vizinhas, seja um animal feroz menos distante como um leão ou um outro objecto qualquer, como por exemplo, uma escrivaninha. É essa a principal dificuldade que surge quando tentamos escrever sobre O Monte dos Vendavais (Wuthering Heights no original), porque, olhemos seja de que perspectiva for para o romance de Emily Brontë, não conseguimos nunca compreender os motivos que levam as personagens do romance (particularmente Cathy e Heathcliff) a agirem da forma como agem. Não percebemos porque escolhe Cathy casar com Edgar, não percebemos porque é que, por vontade própria, se decide a contrair a doença que a vitimaria, não percebemos o que leva Heathcliff a, na véspera do seu casamento com Isabella, tentar enforcar o cachorrinho da sua noiva e não percebemos, fundamentalmente, a mágoa crescente de Heathcliff, que o leva a odiar profunda e incessantemente todos os habitantes de Gimmerton, sem excepção.
É a crueza e a incompreensibilidade de O Monte dos Vendavais que explica que Hélia Correia escreva dezassete páginas onde não encontramos uma única ideia, uma única linha que nos facilite a leitura da obra. No prefácio que acompanha a nova edição do romance lançada pela Relógio d’Água, Hélia Correia faz uma biografia da família Brontë e uma historização de Haworth que pouco acrescenta ao livro porque pouco se pode dizer sobre um objecto que escapa a qualquer tentativa de domesticação. Também no célebre filme homónimo de 1939 de Willliam Wyler encontramos uma tentativa de fuga a esta estranheza, que leva a que o enredo da versão cinematográfica da história seja absurdamente simplificado, tornando-se num melodrama centrado nos caprichos de Cathy, com saltos narrativos de todo incompreensíveis. (João Pedro Vala) (Translation) (Read more)

The Catalan edition of El País (Spain) complains about anachronisms in a biography of poet Jacint Verdaguer.

Per exemple, sobta extraordinàriament que una biografia de Verdaguer es vegi obligada a caure en anacronismes i anatopismes tan insòlits com ara les contínues referències a les lletres europees del XIX i XX ignorades per Jacint —des de les Germanes Brontë a T. S. Eliot, passant per Karl Marx (?), Mary Shelley i el seu Frankenstein, el grup de Bloomsbury a l’engròs, Bakunin, Feuerbach, Mozart i Salieri (en versió tòpica de Milos Forman, autor del film Amadeus), Robert Musil, Dickens, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, Umberto Eco, Walter Benjamin, Don Brown (!), G. M. Hopkins, Carson McCullers, Auden, Yeats, i una colla més.  (Jordi Llovet) (Translation)

Fromfirstpagetolast interviews the writer Lesley Thomson:

What do you do when you aren’t writing? What do you do to relax and get away from it all? I tend to ‘get away from it all’ to write. I frequently sequester myself alone in a cottage in the country to get large chunks of the novel written. My idea of relaxing is reading, this goes in tandem with being a writer for me. I love to read other people’s stories. I’m a big fan of Victorian writers, Wilkie Collins, Dickens and Mrs Gaskell. And of course the Brontës. 

Bitch Flicks posts about the films directed by Andrea Arnold, including her very personal Wuthering Heights 2011;  a novel, by the way, that Brown Study describes 'as a great book that I hate'; tody, ReReading Jane Eyre posts about Liars in Jane Eyre. Antonella Iuliano (in Italian) posts about the recent Italian translation of Lyndall Gordon's Charlotte Brontë biography. Maribel Lechuga (in Spanish) posts an original Jane Eyre illustration.