The whole Brontë family was inspired by, and considerate of, the natural world

The Telegraph and Argus features the forthcoming exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum: Hardy and Free.

Hardy and Free, which opens at the Haworth museum on May 5, is an audio-visual installation produced by acclaimed photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn.

Women from across the district are featured at locations, ranging from moorland to expanses of water, that have special meaning to them.

Participants span the generations and are from all walks of life.

Carolyn said she'd been inspired by the spirit of the Brontë family and the love the siblings had for the landscape surrounding their home to tell the stories of contemporary women who have a relationship with the land.

"This was so much more than a commission," she said.

"It became a big life-enhancing adventure.

"The creative journey took place in the shorter days of winter, the kind of days I find challenging, dark and depressing, and finished as the sun rose and set slightly later in the spring.

"In the process I met with 12 extraordinary women – women who find that landscape gives them a place of freedom to explore and express their thoughts and creativity, or whose lives were influenced by the surroundings they had grown up in."

Amongst them are Lucy Elkiss, an ultra runner, nurse and cellist, featured at Top Withens; Kemmi Gill, a youth worker and musician, at Goit Stock Waterfall, Cullingworth; Shanaz Gulzar, artist and creative director of Bradford UK City of Culture 2025, on Keighley Moor; Aina J Khan, a journalist, at Harden Grange Folly, and Jenny Ramsden, an interfaith advisor and priest, at Brontë Waterfall.

Sassy Holmes, programme officer at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, says: "The whole Brontë family was inspired by, and considerate of, the natural world.

"They pored over books on birds and drafted poems and sketches influenced by their surroundings; our collection shows the significant impact it had on their creativity.

"Emily in particular was passionate about the environment, spending a lot of time on the moor, and so it felt important that with this commission we engaged a contemporary artist who would really embrace the female connection to nature.

"Carolyn is an extraordinary Bradford-based artist and we are completely invested in the stories she has unearthed for this exhibition and the bond each of these wonderful women has with the landscape."

The exhibition will run until January 1, 2024, and is free with entry to the museum. (Alistair Shand)

Bookish questions to countertenor Iestyn Davies in The Times:

The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read

Jane Eyre. I suspect I’m not alone in admitting that I managed to take my GCSE English literature exam having barely bent the spine of Charlotte Brontë’s text. The York Notes companion guide was, however, heavily annotated.