'Harrowing and brutal'

Express reviews the recent broadcast of The Railways That Built Britain presented by Chris Tarrant and recalls that,

Charlotte Brontë and thousands of others lost fortunes meanwhile after sinking their savings into a steam-fuelled investment bubble. (Matt Baylis)

More TV as Spoiled NYC recommends '12 Things We Are Watching Wrapped in a Blanket Indoors This February'.

8. Crimson Peak
Sigh. This gothic haunted house ghost story (aight, when you put it like that, we see why our hopes were perhaps a little too high) was supposed to be so much more than it was. Bronte (Emily) meets Poe meets …uh, the other, less depresso Brontë (Charlotte).
Okay, to its credit, and the reason it’s on this list, the film is veeeery aesthetically pleasing. No really, that probably doesn’t sounds to enticing, but if Baz Luhrmann and Alfred Hitchcock had a baby, it would be this Guillermo Del Toro visual masterpiece.
See it for yourself on HBOGo. (Toni Brannagan)

Now for a few belated Valentine's Day mentions. The Irish Times recommended Wuthering Heights as a Valentine's Day read.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
What? Do I hear dissent? This is one of my all-time favourite novels and while Heathcliff has his critics, I believe in his demented world view. Published in 1847, the only novel by a poet who died unmarried at 30, Wuthering Heights is intense and unwavering in its examination of the sheer madness inflicted by doomed passion. Harrowing and brutal, Brontë wrote as one possessed and this early Victorian family saga will never lose its power because Brontë looked beyond passion to larger issues of obsession and eternity; the ordinary and surreal; sin and damnation. If ever a novel sustains its hold on a reader throughout a reading life, it is this one which most truly exposes the angry residue often left by feelings which began as love. (Eileen Battersby)

Acculturated makes the case for 'Thomas Hardy, Not Jane Austen, [being] a Better Guide to Love'.

Valentine’s Day is here, and with it, the usual slew of literary and pop culture reminders of what love does to us. Pick your poison—Jane Austen, Nicholas Sparks, the Brontes, Old Hollywood, 90s rom coms, BBC bodice rippers—we are saturated by reminders that a rewarding life includes a worthy, rewarding and, above all, romantic relationship. [...]
So what advice might Hardy’s masterpiece [Far from the Madding Crowd] have to offer the 21st century millennial woman? A great deal more than one usually finds in Austen or Brontë. In Hardy’s Bathsheba, we find a financially independent, modern young woman pursuing her business with passion and sense, yet failing to pursue romance with the same insight. (Sarah Gustafson)

Discover Britain Magazine lists several 'Romantic British literary escapes', including:

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
Explore the rambling, desolate moors like Heathcliff and Cathy once did and discover the romance of this wild barren landscape that dominates Emily Brontë’s beautiful novel of love and revenge, Wuthering Heights. Said to be set around the village of Haworth, recreate famous scenes on a walk around Top Withens, the ruined farmhouse that is also said to have inspired the Earnshaw family home. While in the area, make sure to visit The Brontë Collections at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Once the Brontë family home, it now contains the world’s most comprehensive collection of Brontë manuscripts, letters, early editions of novels and poetry, and secondary material on the famous family and their work. Entry costs £8.50 for adults and £4.00 for children.

Signature Reads recommends '4 Great Books that Celebrate the Single Life'. One of them is not Brontë-related at all, as it seems to be described as precisely the opposite.

The End Of The Novel Of Love
Vivian Gornick
“Reader, I married him.” This line, from Jane Eyre, sums up much of English literature until the middle of the twentieth century. If a novel had a happy ending, there’s a good bet it got there by way of a wedding. But what do divorce, contraception, and women’s economic liberation do to this equation? If love no longer equals marriage, and marriage no longer necessarily equally happiness, what new metaphors exist for contemporary writers? In these connected essays, writer Gornick examines the uses, and uselessness, of romantic love in literary fiction. (Jennie Yabroff)

Tatler Magazine wouldn't seem to agree with that view of Jane Eyre, as Jane's aborted wedding to Rochester has been included on a list of 'The 7 worst marriages in history and literature'.

Jane Eyre
By Charlotte Brontë
Poor Jane. She didn't want much out of life. She didn't even want a Vera Wang dress or a Peter Jones wedding list - she just wanted to get married and get on with it. And that's exactly what would have happened, had her wedding not been interrupted by the bombshell that her almost-husband Mr Rochester was in fact still married to the insane, dangerous and terrifying-beyond-your-wildest-nightmares Bertha Mason. The same person who once set Mr Rochester's bed on fire with him in it, stabbed her own brother with a pair of scissors and broke into Jane's room, ripping up her wedding veil in her face and scaring her so badly she actually passed out. Jane became a tramp instead of a newlywed, leaving Thornfield to sleep rough instead of setting off for two blissful weeks in the Maldives. (Clare Bennett)

The Spectrum is not a fan of Fifty Shades Darker.

After one round of carnal pleasure, Christian asks Ana why she waited until 21 to lose her virginity to him. Her answer is that she was looking for someone “exceptional” who could measure up to the kind of men Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë wrote about.
She can do better, and really, so can we. (Brian Truitt)

The Nevada Sagebrush is not a fan either.

Dakota Johnson plays Anastasia, the shy, pale, quirky, bashfully-lip-biting, bangs-sporting, sundress-wearing, under-her-breath-talking Buzzfeed hipster-geek English major who allows a man to sexually abuse her if he gives her a new iPhone. She seems like the type of person to go to a coffee shop and read “Wuthering Heights” just so strangers are aware that she is reading “Wuthering Heights.” (Joey Thyne)

Watford Observer has spoken to actress, comedian and impressionist Debra Stephenson.

“I had singing lessons from the age of nine and I found that I could experiment with my voice because I could hear it and experiment with the way people made sounds. The first record I ever got was Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. I used to flail my arms around and sing, that’s in the act. I even did it on Stars in Their Eyes.” (Mattie Lacey-Davidson)

The staff at Oxford University Press share their favourite love songs:

Celine Aenlle-Rocha, Marketing Coordinator, Academic & Trade Marketing
“It’s All Coming Back to me Now” is a power ballad written by Jim Steinman, and made famous by Celine Dion. Jim Steinman is one of the great ballad composers of the 80s and 90s. A lot of his songs are based on Wuthering Heights and about the passionate (if sometimes unhealthy) love of Victorian novels. This is my favorite cover of what I think is the most romantic song ever written.

T13 (Chile) includes Charlotte Brontë's letters to Constantin Heger among other 7 British love letters. Lost in Drama gives 'The Top 5 Reasons Why The 2006 BBC Adaptation of Jane Eyre Is The Best'.