'Emily Brontë wakes to write at the Wuthering Hour'

Craven Herald and Pioneer reports that poet Ian McMillan has written 20 poems celebrating 20 influential northerners, which will be set to orchestral music.

Guy Fawkes has a plan, “dark as a flat cap,” Emily Bronte wakes to write at the “Wuthering Hour,” JB Priestley has “a voice like parkin” and the ghost of Betty Boothroyd “calls this shaken land to order” as the James Bond composer John Barry, is “licensed to drill deep into music’s fathomless mine.” [...]

Commissioned by Skipton Camerata, 'A Northern Score' blends narration and an original composition to celebrate the remarkable Yorkshire-born individuals, spanning the Middle Ages to the present day, including Guy Fawkes, Emily Brontë and Fred Truman.

‘A Northern Score’ premieres at Skipton Town Hall on Friday, November 22 to mark the 20th anniversary of Skipton Camerata. [...]

Ian said: “It's a wonderful project. I think of the finished article as 20 steps across the Yorkshire landscape, each step singing with the power of possibility and the joy of creativity. I'm proud of the words I've written for the pieces."

Also reported by Keighley News.

According to The New York Times,

Were Heathcliff to roam the blustery moors around Wuthering Heights today, he might be interrupted by a ping on his cellphone saying something like this: The wind is raging, so power is cheap. It’s a good time to plug in the car.

OK. So the 18th-century literary occupants of these windswept hills received no such pings.

But Martin and Laura Bradley do. They live in Halifax, an old mill town below the wuthering, or windy, heights of West Yorkshire. And when a squall kicks up, producing a surplus of electricity from wind turbines on the moor, their phones light up with a notification, like one that informed them of a 50 percent discount one Saturday in October. (Somini Sengupta)

Ahead of Halloween tomorrow, Publishers Weekly shares '15 Bone-Chilling New Horror Books' including

Catherine the Ghost

Kathe Koja. CLASH, $16.95 trade paper (142p) ISBN 978-1-960988-29-4

A companion to Wuthering Heights much in the way that Wide Sargasso Sea is a companion to Jane Eyre, this brilliant retelling from Koja (Dark Factory) whisks readers to the wild English moors but shifts the focus from romantic relationships to a familial one. The narration alternates between the ghost of Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw, who longs for Heathcliff and yearns to be let back into her former home, and her daughter, Catherine Linton the younger, who, having never known her mother, is newly widowed and living at Wuthering Heights. Those familiar with Brontë’s original work will recognize this as the novel’s later period, set six months after narrator Nelly first recounts the tale to Heights visitor Lockwood. Koja digs deeper into this period, keeping an admirable constancy to the tone of Brontë’s novel while giving greater voice to the two Cathys and their turbulent mother-daughter relationship. Ghost-Catherine’s sections are surreal, disconsolate depictions of her frustration and desire, while Catherine’s show her to be a capable, self-possessed young woman. Fans of the original will be thoroughly impressed. (Oct.) (Michael Seidlinger)

Hope radio (Australia) reviews Jane Eyre from a Christian point of view.