Emily will always have my vote

James Daly is the Conservative MP for Bury North, and quite the Brontëite as he confesses in Bury Times:

On my wall, as I write this article is a poster.

The face of the great Emily Brontë looks out into the distance and at once I am reassured.

Throughout my professional life, before and now during my time as an MP, the poster has been a constant and an inspiration to me.

The poster is taken from original artwork by Branwell Brontë and shows Emily together with her two sisters.

At the heart of the picture is a ghostly presence, where Branwell has painted out himself, deeming himself not worthy to be in the same picture as his illustrious siblings.

Within this one image, I see a metaphor for life and even politics. The turmoil of human existence, family, addiction, and mental health challenges but also hope, ambition, determination and in this unique group of individuals, genius.

How is it that three sisters, from an isolated Yorkshire village high on the moors in the 1830s were able to produce some of the greatest works of literature ever written?

I have no answer to this but can only speculate as so many have done over the years. (...)

The first quotation I ever read from Emily was, “No coward soul is mine".

Certainly, the most powerful literary statement I have ever come across, blunt in its assertion but powerful in meaning.

This is not a statement on physical bravery but an assertion of how one individual is to live their life.

I also believe Emily’s interaction with the moors that surrounded her home in Haworth shaped both her personality and writings, “Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree".

A passion for the environment and wildlife was at the heart of who Emily Brontë was, the countryside meant freedom, firing her imagination and inspiring her work.

Finally, when I look at the poster I see a practical person who was concerned with outcomes, not mere words, “If I could, I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results".

In politics, people will often disagree but the politicians I have met in Parliament of all parties have something of Emily Brontë in them. (...)

Emily Brontë will always have my vote.

The Yorkshire Post reports how a

Project to improve walking and cycling trail in Brontë Country misses out on funding

A project to improve a walking and cycling trail in Brontë Country is among those that missed out on vital funding. (Chris Young)

According to the Yorkshire Post Haworth's Youth Hostel is on the market. This half of BrontëBlog cannot repress a wave of nostalgia as he remembers how, too many years ago, this was his first accommodation on his first trip to Haworth.  

Haworth – £950,000

The most expensive Yorkshire hostel is Haworth, situated in the heart of the village where the Bronte sisters grew up. Although the area remains popular with literary tourists, it is only a short drive from Bradford, which has a range of budget accommodation options.

The village’s hostel in the 1950s was actually the Victorian schoolroom where the Brontës had taught, but in the 1970s the YHA acquired Longlands Hall, the former home of Edwin Robinson Merrall. The Merralls owned mills in Haworth and built their mansion in 1884. However, by 1914 they had left the house following the deaths of Edwin and his son. It had other owners until the 1940s, when it became accommodation for immigrant women working in the mills, and it was also a retirement home for a short period.

It now has 89 beds, a licensed bar and is popular with walkers exploring the Worth Valley. Many of the ornate Victorian features have been preserved. (Grace Newton)

Business Post interviews the writer Siobhan MacGowan:

The Brontës were a huge influence on me in my teens. I was besotted with their style of language and the visions their tales conjured up in my mind. I feel their Irish heritage shows both in their lyrical and often raw writing. I would consider myself still influenced by them; Villette by Charlotte Brontë occupied a special place in my heart when younger. Recently I’ve been reading many of the current Irish-based writers like Donal Ryan, Charleen Hurtubise, Rachel Donohue, Anne Griffin, and Aoife Fitzpatrick amongst others.

The writer Michael Harding publishes a column in The Irish Times including a Brontë reference:

 I was so far up the mountain that I was actually looking down at a phone mast nearby, but there was nothing to worry about; even if the thunder came closer and grew louder, even if flashes lit up the mountain like a movie set for Wuthering Heights, there was absolutely nothing to fear, as far as I was concerned.

A nice mention in an article in The Morning Call:

I’ve reached an age where I always root for the old guy to get the girl. The 1985 romantic comedy “Murphy’s Romance,” starring old guy James Garner and young and attractive Sally Fields, is one of my favorites.  Rereading “Jane Eyre” or “Sense and Sensibility” can also be recommended. (George Heitmann)

Kotaku talks about he horror games genre:

Horror—including horror video games—perverts the lovesick girl cliche in order to create another, in which a girl in love is actually the Grim Reaper. Yandere Simulator and Doki Doki Literature Club pass around the suffocating love established by centuries of Wuthering Heights melodrama and international erotic thrillers, and indie horror adventure MiSide is the most recent to take it on. (Ashley Bardham)

The last concerts of rock legends in The Telegraph & Argus:

In 2014 I saw Kate Bush at her Before the Dawn residency - her first live shows since 1979 - and she focused on two albums and a handful of crowd-pleasers. Some fans were disappointed she didn’t sing the early hits but, at the age of 55, she quite rightly chose not to leap about in a leotard singing Wuthering Heights. Respect. (Emma Clayton)

Eroica Fenice, L'Opinione della Libertà and Il Sussidiario (Italy) review the film Emily: 

Emily non è un film per tutti. È un inno di Amore ad uno dei romanzi più belli che siano stati scritti nella storia della letteratura inglese. La storia immortale di un sentimento inusuale, perverso, che passeggia sul filo sottile della convenzione, degli status sociali, talvolta barcollando, talvolta precipitando. Quello è il sentimento provato da Emily Brontë, e se, usciti dalla sala (vuotissima), volete urlare, volare, dimenarvi in un stato incosciente, allora, siete tra i pochi eletti. (Eleonora Vitali) (Translation)

La sceneggiatura ben studiata e la regia minuziosa sono accomunate da una sensibilità autenticamente femminile. Il copione coglie anche le più sottili sfumature dell’animo umano: delusioni, aspettative mancate, tradimenti, con conseguenti rivelazioni tardive. Una miscela complessa di sentimenti e relazioni descritta in modo assolutamente convincente. Emily è una vicenda di sentimenti ed emozioni che Frances O’Connor riesce a portare sul grande schermo senza retorica, mostrando in questo suo esordio dietro la macchina da presa, notevoli capacità artistiche. (Laura Bianconi) (Translation)

Il viso di Emily, interpretata da Emma Mackey (tra i protagonisti più apprezzati di “Sex Education”) vibra di fragilità, passione e grande modernità, nonostante vesta gli abiti del passato. Mackey ci regala una prova emozionante che prova a scuotere il torpore del conformismo del tempo che fu e di quello che torna, eternamente, a minacciare le nostre storie.
Il film alla fine, è piacevole, intenso e a tratti poetico. Ci propone ciò che è verosimile più che la verità storica, il passato più che il presente, ma riesce con efficacia ad attualizzare la morale ottocentesca ai dilemmi della sensibilità contemporanea. (Roberto Bernocchi) (Translation)

Ara (in Catalan) reviews a Catalan translation of essays of Virginia Woolf,  Escriptores. Assaigs i retrats:

Ella, que ha tingut a la seva disposició una àmplia biblioteca, que ha pogut confraternitzar amb els intel·lectuals que freqüentaven les tertúlies del seu pare, sap de la indigència cultural en què van viure les escriptores que l’han precedit: “Així i tot, Orgull i prejudici, Cims borrascosos, Vilette (sic) i Middlemarch les van escriure dones que foren privades per força de qualsevol experiència més enllà de les que oferís una sala d’estar de classe mitjana”, escriu a Les dones i la ficció. La realitat és que Jane Austen, les germanes Brontë i George Eliot tenen un mèrit immens, que ens porta a haver de fer el que dictamina Woolf: tenir en compte un munt de condicionants que no tenen res a veure en l’art, una feina que la crítica canònica –tan masculina, tan patriarcal– sempre ha rebutjat. (M. Àngels Cabré) (Translation)

ArtsLife (Italy) has elevated the blunder to a whole new level. Dropping Emily generates so much confusion:

Jane Brontë con Cime tempestose, che assomiglia molto a una sceneggiatura, ha anticipato il cinema. (Matilda Sereni) (Translation)

El Mundo (Spain) reviews De Viva Voz. Conferencias by Carmen Martín-Gaite: 

Martín Gaite sigue a Denis de Rougemont, autor de El amor y Occidente, en la idea de que el amor es una creación literaria de Occidente. "El que no acierta a contar a otro o a sí mismo una historia de amor, acaba dándose cuenta de que esa historia no ha existido", escribe. No es de extrañar que en su paseo por el amor recorra Cumbres borrascosas, Las desventuras del joven Werther o Madame Bovary, en cuya protagonista encuentra parecidos con las mujeres a las que en su infancia en Salamanca llamaban "noveleras". (Aloma Rodríguez) (Translation)

The Telegraph & Argus publishes the news of the Arts Council England’s decision to designate the Brontë Parsonage collection as outstanding. India Education Diary highlights the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery Becoming the Brontës exhibition. Far Out revisits a 2011 book recommendations by Brian Cox which included Wuthering Heights. Stars Insider (France) includes Charlotte Brontë on a list of female authors that changed literature.