The Times reviews the first episode of The Queen’s Reading Room and wishes there was a bit more depth to it.
At the end HM is once again asked a random question that tells us nothing. “Of the three Brontë sisters, which are we mostly likely to find on Your Majesty’s bookshelves and why?” HM replies Emily, because she likes Wuthering Heights, and they leave it at that while I weep quietly into my keyboard. And? Why? Tell me why you like Wuthering Heights! What about Jane Eyre? (Hilary Rose)
David Livingstone, Scottish missionary, physician, scientific investigator, explorer and anti-slavery campaigner, among many other things, became one of the most popular British heroes of the 19th-century.
Now, after researching the family headstone in Shipley, a group of local historians have discovered that Richard Thornton, born in Cottingley, was a geologist recruited by Livingstone. They travelled together along the East African coast, up the Zambezi and Shire Rivers. Richard died aged 25 in Malawi and is buried there - his grave a local attraction.
Richard’s fascinating story is revealed in a new film produced by Bradford Through the Lens, a popular YouTube channel exploring the history and heritage of hidden and unusual spaces in the district. Run by Riaz Ahmed, with Andrew Bolt and Mark Nicholson among the researchers, the channel (youtube.com/bradfordthroughthelens) has made several videos about Bradford’s past, including hidden Saltaire tunnels, a war grave mystery and an unsolved Victorian murder.
In this latest film, Andrew Bolt begins by examining an old map of Cottingley. He reveals that Richard was born in 1838 in Cottingley House, which became Cottingley Hall, now long gone.
When he was a child, Richard’s mother, Elizabeth, advertised for a governess for teach him but “the person who came for the interview didn’t get the job”. It was noted that she had no musical skills, but she could write.
“That person turned out to be Charlotte Brontë,” says Andrew. “It seems a pivotal moment in time, a ‘Sliding Doors’ effect. If Richard had been taught by Charlotte, would he have gone on to do what he did, or would he have taken a more literary, academic route?” (Emma Clayton)
Name three books that are memorable in terms of your reading pleasure.
As a child I would read anything I could get my hands on. My favorite book growing up was probably Charlotte Brontës “Jane Eyre.” All that gothic drama! (Peter McDermott)
Harper's Bazaar (Australia) features 'Model-turned-filmmaker and fashion designer' Lili Sumner.
“As a teenager, my younger siblings lived with my dad and all my older siblings on my mum’s side were already travelling overseas or had left home,” she says. During those quiet stretches she became an obsessive reader; she name-checks the Bronte sisters, Jean Rhys and Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – “a very beautiful portrait of a random life” – as influential writers and texts. It instilled an enduring obsession with literature. (Grace O’Neill)
Clash interviews singer Mae Karthauser.
Do you remember when you first heard Kate Bush?
I must have been only seven or eight years old. Funny story actually. It was on the old ITV talent show Stars In Their Eyes. This woman said ‘tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be Kate Bush!’ and emerged from the dry ice in a giant wig. I thought she looked nuts. But then she started to sing Wuthering Heights, and I was inspired. How can you not want to dance around in a big, long dress to that? (Andy Hill)
Daily Kos quotes the poem
Emily Brontë by Louise Imogen Guiney.
What sacramental hurt that brings
The terror of the truth of things
Had changed thee? Secret be it yet.
’Twas thine, upon a headland set,
To view no isles of man’s delight,
With lyric foam in rainbow flight,
But all a-swing, a-gleam, mid slow uproar,
Black sea, and curved uncouth sea-bitten shore. (from Happy Ending: The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney, © 1955 by Grace Guiney – Houghton Mifflin Company)
We finish with another podcast as
EyreBuds seems to have reached its final episode.
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