Is Mr Rochester the worst?

In Australia they are as baffled as we are by the whole Lily Cole 'controversy'. An article on ABC News ends by compiling several tweets defending her appointment. And there's one letter to The Guardian attesting to her being an able writer:

Apparently Nick Holland thinks Lily Cole should not be creative partner at the Brontë Society because she is not a writer (Report, 5 January). Well, in fact she is. She wrote an excellent piece of several thousand words for a book I edited, A Book of King’s, about King’s College, Cambridge. And that while working for her degree in history of art. She got a first, by the way.
Karl Sabbagh
Bloxham, Oxfordshire

A local librarian writes about reading The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowel in the Agassiz-Harrison Observer.

Over these cold days, I have on my reading-side table a great recommend – The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell.
It’s the story of a young student named Samantha,who is the last relative and about eight generations away from the famous literary Brontës.
Samantha was homeschooled by an eccentric father, and the characters and plot unfold in a way that keeps you from going to bed at a decent time.
There are lots of name-drops and references to the Brontës and their contemporaries, which makes it a delightful blast from the past.
Keeping it interesting, too, is the intrigue as the bad guy tries to uncover Brontë treasures that the world thinks she has secreted away, and the darkly, interesting professor that Samantha is tutored by. I am savouring it! (Terrill Scott)

While singer/songwriter Unwoman has released a new album, War Stories, and Vents Magazine quotes her as saying,

This is an extremely personal album for me, but in ways that I know will resonate with a lot of other people. [...] “Bad Man” was my opportunity to drag Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre (if you’ve read the book you know he’s the worst!) (RJ Frometa)

Is he though? At any rate, lyrics and track can be found here.

The Irish Times reviews the film Une Vie (distributed in English-speaking countries as A Woman's Life), directed by Stéphane Brizé.

A Woman’s Life shares rather more DNA with such gritty English period cinema as Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights and William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth. Instead of a grand establishing shot of a hedge maze, the gardens are muddy and covered in useful glass cloches. (Tara Brady)

BookMarx Books imagines an alternative ending for Jane Eyre.