Class differences and orphanages

Cultured Vultures discusses 'The longevity of Romeo and Juliet'.

Romeo and Juliet laid the bare bones for the formula when it comes to tragic love stories; we see it years later in Wuthering Heights, with Cathy and Heathcliff who separated by class differences and an unflinching stubbornness, or even recently with The World to Come, with the pair’s relationship doomed because of their social setting and gender. (Natasha Alvar)

The Guardian reviews the book The Wild Track by Margaret Reynolds.

Volunteering as an independent visitor in a care home, Reynolds was the only adult spending time with the children who wasn’t paid to do so; no adults lived consistently alongside them. This is better than the grim orphanages in Dickens or Brontë, or probably than the 1960s American institution recreated in The Queen’s Gambit, where the children are routinely drugged with tranquilisers. But we have not got it right, and reading Lucy’s account, the precariousness of the care system is painfully felt. It’s this that makes Reynolds’s book such a necessary contribution to the literature on motherhood, and it’s lucky that both writers are so thoughtful, and so inspiringly attentive to each other’s experience. (Lara Feigel)

How British landscapes have influenced musicians and composers in The Times:

Another evocative beauty spot — and Emily Brontë — led Kate Bush to write Wuthering Heights. “Out on the wiley windy moors/We’d roll and fall in green,” she sings, conjuring up grass stains, sounding as windswept as the romantic haven in Yorkshire that inspired her. (Jonathan Dean)

The Sisters' Room has a chat with Charlie Rauh about the Brontës and music.