No wonder

 The Telegraph & Argus includes two questions in its Big Bradford Quiz:

1) Thornton arts hub South Square Centre was taken into community ownership back in January 2020. What is the village also famous for?

A) Birthplace of JB Priestley

B) Birthplace of Zayn Malik

C) Birthplace of the Brontë Sisters (...)

8) Bradford’s North Parade had a boost in August with the opening of two independent bars - Crafted, and Boar & Fable. Which artistic Bradfordian once had a creative studio next to the street?

A) Frederick Delius

B) David Hockney

C) Branwell Brontë (Emma Clayton)

Still in Bradford, The Telegraph & Argus tries to sell optimism:

The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth will benefit from an emergency grant of £119,200. It comes as the Brontë Society, gearing up to mark the bicentenary of Anne Brontë’s birth in 2020, was forced to close the museum for the longest period in its 92-year history. Missing the income from its usual 70,000-plus worldwide visitors, this famous attraction will now be secure through winter, serving audiences through digital activity. (Emma Clayton)

The Sunday Times lists the best observations of the year by its readers:

Belittled women

Grant Tucker says that the Brontë sisters “toiled and gossiped” at their home. Does he mean “wrote novels”? No wonder the siblings used masculine pseudonyms. (Cathy Beck, Burton-in-Lonsdale, North Yorkshire(

Wisconsin State Journal interviews the author Margot Peters:

 They purchased the house, built in 1888, for $24,000 with the proceeds from her book “Unquiet Soul,” a biography of the English novelist and poet Charlotte Bronte. Peters’ house is now assessed at $379,000. (Barry Adams)

The Times recommends next week's broadcast of the National Theatre's Jane Eyre production on Sky Arts:

Sally Cookson's vivid adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel shows what can be achieved with a small, dynamic cast, a fierce leading lady (Madeleine Worrall)  and a hard-working set. It is no substitute for live performance, but when did you last put the kettle on during a three-hour play? (Helen Stewart)

Politico publishes a compilation of 2020 obituaries including Olivia de Havilland and Alex Trebek:

 Personally, it enabled her two more decades on screen, in roles as varied as Charlotte Brontë in Devotion (1946) and a mental patient in the movie based on Mary Jane Ward’s autobiographical novel The Snake Pit (1947). In the end, de Havilland enjoyed a career as long as that of Katharine Hepburn. (Carrie Rickey)

He was a Canadian ex-pat and Francophone who drove a Dodge Ram and guzzled diet soda; he evangelized for the Home Depot while favoring East Yorkshire, the site of the Brontë family home, as a vacation spot. (Derek Robertson)

Hull Live recommends walks around East Yorkshire:

Paull

There is a walk which barely takes out of Hull but transports you to a unique world of bleak beauty.

Paull is a place of contradictions. The village would not look out of place set in the heart of the Wolds yet all around it are sprawling industrial chemical plants and ports.

Stare out into Paull Holme Strays and it is as if civilisation must be miles away but turn your head and there are busy ports aplenty.

The bleakness rivals the Yorkshire Moors of Brontë country except it backs on to the murky waters of the Humber. (James Campbell)

More Bridgerton mentions:

 Arduo che catturi i seguaci di Jane Austen, delle Brontë o delle superbe poesie di Emily Dickinson. Un giudizio? Frivola commedia con un buon evolversi di impulsi, passioni ed eventi di episodio in episodio; niente abissi dell'anima o sfide epocali, mentre si accenna solo a solo a Wellington nelle campagne napoleoniche. (Fiorella Minervino in La Stampa) (Translation)

Entre les mésaventures burlesques de la famille Featherington et les ragots colportés par la chroniqueuse du carnet mondain de la saison, Lady Whistledown, la série pousse les idées de la femme victorienne, notamment celle dépeinte dans les multiples œuvres de Jane Austen ou de Charlotte Brontë, au-delà de la simple introduction et éducation à l’amour. (Asma El Mardi in Brain Damaged) (Translation)

 ¿Cómo vas a bostezar ante un Londres seudovictoriano con una reina de Inglaterra negra y duques con rastas? Ni Kenneth Branagh hasta arriba de sangría tras releer Cumbres borrascosas en Benidorm habría ido tan lejos. (Sergio del Molino in El País) (Translation)

Entertainment Weekly asks for more romance series adaptations:

A Secrets of Charlotte Street series would offer audiences something like Jane Eyre blended with Hulu’s Harlots, infusing the Gothic genre and its obsession with “subversion” with sex positive mores that titillate and provoke in equal measure. (Maureen Lee Lenker)

The Yorkshire Post celebrates the film adaptation of The Railway Children:

They take in a host of locations used during filming, including, at Oxenhope, the family home Three Chimneys (actually Bents House) and at Haworth, the doctor’s house (the Brontë Parsonage), the butcher’s shop (now the tourist information centre), the ironmonger’s shop (a cottage off Main Street) and also the base for the film crew (the Fleece Inn). (Sebastian Oake)

James Dacre explains in The Sunday Times the terrible consequences of the COVID crisis on the theatre scene:

March. The team for our co-production of Wuthering Heights is travelling south to embark on rehearsals with our partner venue, the Nuffield Southampton Theatres, which was voted regional theatre of the year a few seasons ago. With the government announcement on March 20 that all theatres must close, the rehearsals are cancelled before they’ve begun. Within two short months, the Nuffield will have filed for insolvency.

The Guardian tries too hard to save something of 2020:

The original disco ran for several months, but [Sophie] Ellis-Bextor brought it back in October to celebrate Halloween. Her son Kit turned up in a black dress and bear mask: “I was singing Wuthering Heights to him, and he looked like a little reverent bear and I thought, ‘He’s my Heathcliff and I’m Cathy… this is mental!’” But then that was the point, to offer something daft and carefree to help people escape the anxiety-inducing hum of the news in 2020. (Jessica Murray, Toby Moses, Tim Jonze, Sirin Kale, Micha Frazer-Carroll and Vanessa Kisuule)