New Statesman is a bit too hard on Brontë radio adaptations:
Now is the season of repeats and stand-in presenters. Nobody minds. August radio ought to be like a corkboard – things seemingly long pinned and faded (an Angela Lansbury doc on Radio 2; an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor on Radio 4 Extra) and then the occasional bright fragment. Like Martha Argerich playing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No 1 at the Albert Hall (Prom 43, 17 August). (Antonia Quirke)
Well, we mind a bit. This is, in fact,
the Rachel Joyce 2005 adaptation of The Professor with Paul Venables and Jonathan Keeble.
The Weekly Standard clearly loved Claire Harman's Charlotte Brontë biography:
Claire Harman's Charlotte Brontë: A Life is excellent. Not only does it contain new facts and impeccable scholarship, it remembers "what many biographies forget: that this is a terrific story. Brimming with indomitable personalities, trials and ordeals, passions and disappointments, it has all the elements of a traditional romance. At the same time, its protagonist, a restless, dissatisfied heroine struggling to make and remake the world in her quest for growth and recognition, is the quintessential modern subject: the subject of the modern novel." (Micah Mattix)
Stylist lists several new retellings of classic books:
The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesy (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë)
Margot Livesy cleverly weaves Jane Eyre – her favourite book as a girl – into a semi-autobiographical tale. Livesy herself was orphaned as a child in the 1950s and sent from her native Iceland to Scotland, which is where her retelling of Jane Eyre begins. Whether the infamous plot twist that concludes Charlotte Brontë’s original novel remains is for her to know and us to find out. (Victoria Gray)
Doncaster Free Press talks about the local Cast theatre season:
Mathew praised the work done to create audiences for the new venue, which recently had a sell-out world premiere of Northern Ballet’s Jane Eyre.
He said: “Forty-nine per cent of the audience for Jane Eyre had never been to Cast before and there are lots and lots of communities we’re still trying to tap into – lots of people who live in the borough and surrounding areas.”
It's National Parks Week and
Derbyshire Times reminds us that Peak District
has also been the setting for many film and TV productions, including The Duchess, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and The Other Boleyn Girl. (Keith Spooner)
Another bookworm life posts about
Jane Eyre.
Claire Harman is a lively writer but her biography of Charlotte Bronte is riddled with inaccuracies. She has an unfortunate tendency, shared by so many earlier biographers, of stating as fact what is only supposition.
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