The Black Bull pub is one of the oldest pubs in Yorkshire with its history traced back to the 16th century - and is said to be haunted.
The current pub, situated next to the Anglican Church of Haworth is known as the home of the Brontës - the nineteenth-century literary family.
One of the Brontë brothers [sic], Branwell, was known to visit the Black Bull a bit too often.
Branwell was an alcoholic and opium addict.
He would while away his days drinking copious amounts in the bar before dying aged 31.
According to legend, in death it would seem that he has found it difficult to stay away from his favourite haunt.
A bell that remains within the pub which Branwell used to ring when he wanted served another drink - the bell is rang before closing every night.
Various owners have even claimed that they have awoken in the middle of the night upstairs to hear it ringing, and upon going downstairs to investigate - having found no one there.
There is also an original chair (or a replica, depending on who you speak to) which was said to belong to Branwell and his ghostly shadowy figure has been seen on various occasions sitting in it, and then suddenly disappearing.
Just outside of the pub, Branwell’s spirit is said to be seen crossing the cobbles of Main Street to the old chemist where he would be served his laudanum. (Charlie Wilson)
Ben Macintyre writes an essay about holidays as a British tradition in
The Times and quotes Charlotte Brontë:
About 40 British spa towns followed, but these were primarily places for recuperation, not pleasure. In the summer of 1839 Charlotte Brontë, working as a governess in Skipton, Yorkshire, wrote to a friend about her holiday plans. At the age of 23 she had never visited the coast, never seen a beach or waves. The prospect of a trip to Bridlington, 80 miles away, was thrilling: “The idea of seeing the sea — of being near it — watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight and noonday — in calm, perhaps in storm — fills and satisfies my mind. I shall be discontented at nothing.”
In fact, Brontë found the whole holiday experience overwhelming. The author of Jane Eyre “was quite overpowered, she could not speak until she had shed some tears . . . her eyes were red and swollen, she was still trembling . . . for the remainder of the day she was very quiet, subdued and exhausted”. Which of us has not felt the same at the end of a holiday?
Also in
The Times, Laura Freeman talks about the 'nonsense' novels of Stephen Leacock:
Gertrude [the Governess: Or, Simple Seventeen] is a send-up of the sort of novel — Pamela, Jane Eyre, many, many Mills & Boons — in which a penniless, parentless, prospectless maid, governess or winsome dependant gets a position at a Great House where she encounters a Great Man. Will they? Won’t they? Can you guess? The tension is . . . immaterial.
Wigan Today reports that poet and playwright Lemn Sissay has received an OBE. Asked what he would say to young people in care today:
"Harry Potter was a foster child, Superman was also fostered, Jane Eyre, Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. We can celebrate the nature of children and care inside popular culture inside literature, but also as our next-door neighbours.” (Laura Harding)
Extra (Ireland) on the questions in the English Leaving Cert Paper II.
Other literary works to feature on the paper included Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and William Shakespeare’s King Lear and The Tempest. [...]
Ms Tuffy, an English teacher at Jesus and Mary Secondary School, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo, said this year’s Leaving Cert English Paper II was well pitched, being both challenging and rewarding. She said Thursday’s paper offered a very different experience to what is normally quite gruelling three-hour, 20-minute examination.
‘Those students who opted to take today’s exam will perhaps feel vindicated given the sheer scope of choice afforded them,’ she said. ‘While those who studied Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale will have considered the impact of the dystopian aspects of the narrative, others will have explored how “Gothic aspects of the novel increase or diminish the narrative power” of Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.’ (Helen Bruce)
In the Netflix TV series “Bridgerton,” Regé-Jean Page plays Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings, a throwback to previous heartthrobs in literature — ranging from Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” to Mr. Darcy in Jane Austin’s “Pride and Prejudice.” But the 31-year-old actor didn’t want the character to be stuck in the past.
“And so, in carrying the torch, we need to make some ground with it,” Page tells “The Crown” star Emma Corrin in Variety’s Actors on Actors TV issue, on newsstands now. “Because Simon’s an archetype that already exists. He’s Darcy. He’s Heathcliff. He’s a tall, dark, brooding, emotionally stunted man.”
In building the character — based on Julia Quinn’s novels set in 1800s England — for modern audiences, Page tried to subvert previous tropes associated with toxic masculinity seen in literature. (Ramin Setoodeh)
Infobae (Spain) shares the Spanish translation of an essay by Lydia Davis on her literary influences.
Debía de tener trece o catorce años cuando vi por primera vez una página de Samuel Beckett. Me quedé helada. Llegué a Beckett después de leer las acaloradas novelas de Mazo de la Roche (aunque no tan acaloradas como para que no pudieran formar parte de una biblioteca escolar muy decente para niñas) y las novelas románticas más clásicas, como Jane Eyre y Cumbres borrascosas, así como los textos de impronta social de John Dos Passos, el primer autor cuyo estilo noté y disfruté con plena conciencia. De pronto, tenía entre manos un libro, Malone muere, en el cual el narrador pasaba una página entera describiendo su lápiz y el primer desarrollo de la trama era que se le caía el lápiz. Nunca me había imaginado algo semejante. (Translation)
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