The White House's Attic

A couple of Brontë Parsonage news in Keighley News (1 and 2):

Brontë Treasures by Candlelight is the title of a special session at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
A member of the curatorial team will spend an hour sharing facts and stories about a number of carefully-selected objects.
The curator will offer a specialist insight into the lives and work of the inspirational Brontë family.
Visitors to the Haworth museum will also be able to experience the historic rooms at the Parsonage by candlelight.
A spokesman said: “Fascinating and moving in equal measure, this Brontë Treasures by Candlelight is a not-to-be-missed experience.”
Places are limited to 12 for the event on Friday December 8 from 7.30pm. Tickets cost £85, including a glass of wine.
There will be a wreath making workshop at the museum on Saturday and Sunday, December 16 and 17, at 2pm, when visitors can make a festive wreath for their front door inspired by the traditional Christmas decorations at the museum.
All materials will be provided, and the workshop includes mince pies and mulled wine to get participants in the festive mood.
Tickets cost £30, including festive refreshments and admission to the museum.
December is the last month when people can visit the museum to see this year’s two flagship exhibitions.
To Walk Invisible: From Parsonage To Production features costumes from Sally Wainwright’s acclaimed Brontë drama, which was shown on the BBC last Christmas.
Designer Tom Pye worked closely with experts and academics to create costumes authentic to the period and which evoked the separate personalities of each member of the Brontë family.
Also on display are props made especially for the drama and a selection of stills from photographer Michael Prince giving an insight into the filmmaking process.
The other exhibition, Mansions in the Sky, is leading poet Simon Armitage’s exploration of the mind and world of the notorious Branwell Brontë. (David Knights)

A brief Jane Eyre mention in the second episode of Amy Sherman Palladino's new series for Netflix, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel:

You love me, Joel?
Rochester probably loved that first wife of his, and then she went nuts and burned the house down.

A book signing will be a highlight of the last late-night opening of the year at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Literature fans are invited to join museum staff for a glass of sherry and a chance to explore the atmospheric Haworth building after hours, until 8pm on Thursday, December 14.
The house will be decorated for the festive season and the shop shelves will be bursting with ideas for last-minute gifts.
Local author Stephen Whitehead will be available at the museum to sign copies of his recently re-issued book, The Brontës’ Haworth.
Admission will be free after 5pm for visitors who provide proof of residence in BD22, BD21, BD20 or Thornton. Usual admission prices apply to all the visitors. (Richard Parker)

As we have reported previously, Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights has been chosen as the favourite song inspired by a book or poem. Scottish Daily Record reports:

Kate Bush’s hit song, Wuthering Heights, has been revealed as Scotland’s favourite song inspired by a book or poem, in a vote for Book Week Scotland.
Scottish Book Trust, the national charity which runs Book Week Scotland, has announced that Wuthering Heights, the 1978 Number One hit by Kate Bush , has been voted the winner with 17% of the total votes.
After watching the last few minutes of the 1967 BBC dramatisation of Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush was inspired to read Emily Brontë's book and write the classic song.
The song is sung from the point of view of character Catherine Earnshaw, and uses several quotations from the book, using Cathy's famous quote: “I'm so cold, Let me in through your window.” (Colette Crampsey)

Ariel Nesser, co-founder of The Pollination Project writes in The Huffington Post:

In the US, there is no doubt we have a long history of leaving women out of our libraries. There are few histories written about women. For centuries, female writers even had to use male pen names. For example, Emily Brontë’s famous novel Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under the pseudonym “Ellis Bell.”

Daily Nation (Kenya) interviews the writer Frances Ogamba:

Your childhood favourite books? (Gloria Mwaniga)
I loved Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I was nine years old the first time I read it. It captured the pre-colonial Igbo culture and politics, and led me to find meaning and value in my immediate environment. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is what I consider a girl child’s favourite. This book transcended borders and captured the life of almost every 9-13-year-old in the world. King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green was a beautiful fairy tale of magic. 

John Sutherland writes in The Times about the new adaptation of  E.M. Forster's Howard's End:

Margaret (née Schlegel, living in her English country house on money sweated out of black labour) joins Fanny Bertram (née Price, living comfortably at Mansfield Park on money sweated out of West Indian slaves) and Jane Rochester (née Eyre, living happily at Ferndean on money sweated from slaves in Madeira).

Also in The Times, a review of the Diary of an Ordinary Schoolgirl by Margaret Forster:

Margaret is a good egg. You like her more and more. In a year she goes from gushing schoolgirl to gymslip intellectual. In April she is reading Pollyanna of Magic Valley. By October she is on to Orlando (“peculiar”), Wuthering Heights (“very gd.”), Villette (“slow, but deep”) and Bleak House (“Dickens is wizard”). She begins to have opinions: “Can’t stick Molièrs plays — soft.”; “Started making notes on Catherine de Medici — she’s a jolly interesting person.” (Laura Freeman)

The Yorkshire Post interviews the Northern's Ballet dancer Abigail Prudames:

“Yes, I suppose it has given me a taste for being involved more in the choreography, but there is still so much more I want to achieve in my performing career. It’s no secret that I have always had an eye on playing the part of Cathy in Wuthering Heights.”

Focus Daily News recommends books as gifts:

The Lost Letter: A Victorian Romance by Mimi Matthews.
This is an engrossing tale especially tailored for those (like this reader) who are avid fans of period romances like those penned by Jane Austin (sic) and the Brontë sisters. It’s also reminiscent of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, although the beast in this story is a battle-scarred Army veteran. (Jo Ann Holt)

The Australian traces a profile of the actress Charlie Murphy

In the past few years she has appeared on top-notch British TV with solid regularity, usually with an accent somewhere north of Derby. She was in Peter Moffat's The Village, and played Ann Gallagher in Sally Wainwright's Happy Valley. Wainwright then cast her as Anne Brontë in last year's blustery biopic To Walk Invisible, which involved a shoot on location in Haworth. “So bloody windy and so bloody cold,” Murphy laughs.

The Telegraph has a list of winter walks:

Brontë Walk, Haworth, Yorkshire (eight miles)
Charlotte Brontë’s spirit lives on, with those of her sisters and brother, on Haworth Moors, which are at their wildest and most atmospheric in winter and the inspiration for so much of the Brontës’ work.
Heading out west from the pub, past Lower Laithe Reservoir and then back through Stanbury to the Museum Parsonage, you will pass, on the return, the Brontë Waterfall described by Charlotte as a “perfect torrent racing over the rocks, white and beautiful”.

Common Dreams compares Trump with Bertha Mason:

Was it Johnson at the US embassy in London? If so, maybe he has rethought his advice to Britishers to get to know Trump. Trump is like Bertha Mason, the violent madwoman in the attic in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. It is better she isn’t seen or heard by the house guests. Unfortunately, Bertha did eventually manage to burn down her estranged husband Edward Rochester’s house, as Trump is doing to the United States. (Juan Cole)

Guillermo Del Toro and monsters on Birth. Movies. Death:

Crimson Peak’s Lucille (Jessica Chastain) is like Jane Eyre’s Bertha Rochester, given her own narrative beyond “the madwoman in the attic.” In voiceover Lucille explains: “Love makes monsters of us all.” (Priscilla Page)

Hufvudstadsbladet (Finland) reviews the film Lady Macbeth:

Lady Macbeth är kostymdrama med stilrent feminina och feministiska kompositioner. Tankarna går till både Emily Brontë och Sofia Coppola. (Sara Ehnholm Hielm) (Translation)

El Mundo (Spain) interviews the writer Aixa de la Cruz, with a blunder for free.

Aixa, que dice deberle parte de su estilo, cruel, salvaje, a ratos poderosamente oscuro, a Charlotte Brontë - «con 14 años leí Cumbres borrascosas y me pareció la cosa más fascinante que había leído nunca, y lloré muchas veces, porque la leí muchas veces» -, cree que lo que estamos viviendo estos días en España «es una lucha por el relato», por ese relato único contra el que la literatura debe batirse en duelo, que, en realidad, ha existido desde el principio. (Laura Fernández) (Translation)

ShelfAwareness reviews A Secret Sisterhood by Emma Claire Sweeney and  Emily Midorikawa.