The pathetic fallacy of West Yorkshire

The Guardian features Bradford and its UK City of Culture status.

If you grew up in the city, Bradford’s cultural history was drilled into you from an early age. The names Forster, Priestley and Brontë were inescapable, as was the annual school trip to the Industrial Museum to relive life as it was when Bradford was a booming textile centre. [...]

But Bradford 2025 has worked hard to reflect the city’s culture now. Creative director Shanaz Gulzar (who lives in Keighley) has put together a programme that doesn’t just lean into the tried and tested big names. Yes, David Hockney and the Brontës feature, but so does bassline house remixed with an orchestra, while the working-class plays of Andrea Dunbar are placed, as they should be, in the centre of the city’s literary landscape. [...]

But talking to Gulzar at the launch, she told me the things she is most excited about are capital projects that should give Bradford’s cultural institutions more longevity: public toilets at the Brontë parsonage, or facilitating the Peace Museum’s move to Salts Mill. The budget is being used to plug some pretty big holes, at a time when local councils are completely removing arts funding and securing grants for capital projects is getting harder. (Lanre Bakare)

While BBC News is worried about tourists not having enough hotels in the 'meaningless concept' that is West Yorkshire.

A lack of hotel rooms could hamper the growth of tourism in West Yorkshire despite Bradford's City of Culture year, a report has found. [...]

The strategy named parts of West Yorkshire that could be promoted more effectively, including Haworth's Bronte links, Saltaire, the National Science and Media Museum and Bradford's curry culture.

The strategy also stated: "Some areas have low awareness among consumers, and perceptions are sometimes negative i.e. "northern and industrial".

"West Yorkshire is a relatively meaningless concept to consumers who tend to think of either Yorkshire or individual places or products like Holmfirth or Bradford, for example." (Chris Young and Charles Heslett)

Well then it's the tourists' problem, not the locals'. Let's stop this trend in which locals have to adapt and conform to the tourists instead of the other way around.

City Hub Sydney features Emma Rice and her Wuthering Heights adaptation.

But why Wuthering Heights?

“Well, I’ve always loved it. If you’re a Brit, you’ve read it, you’ve seen it, heard the Kate Bush song. You’ve probably had to study it because it’s in all our syllabuses. So, it’s kind of in your bones,” Rice says.

“I also grew up in the middle of England, and we used to go walking in the north of England. I’d been to the ruins of what they thought was the Wuthering Heights moors. It’s very, very disappointing,” she adds.

But it wasn’t the moors or her bones that reminded her of the novel, but the Calais Jungle refugee and immigrant camp in France between 2015 and 2016. 

The camp acted as a sort of purgatory for thousands from all over the world, hoping to get a chance for a better life in Britain. Many died trying to get into the UK.

“The government were choosing how many unaccompanied child migrants the British government would take in. And I just remember thinking, ‘oh my god, we are doomed if we’re not looking after the most vulnerable people on the planet’. That was when I thought, ‘wait a minute, wasn’t Heathcliff an unaccompanied child migrant?’ I went to the bookshelf, pulled down Wuthering Heights, flipped through, and there he was on Liverpool docks, dark skin, dark hair, speaking a different language.”

This thread of hope, of the possibility of a better life, is woven through Rice’s adaptation. Love and romance have had their time in the Wuthering Heights spotlight. Here, they’ve been swapped for revenge, intergenerational trauma, and the breaking of cycles. 

“Most productions concentrate on the first half of the book, just Catherine and Heathcliff, the romance. I thought it was really important that the book’s in two halves, and the second half is hope with young Cathy and Hetton.” Rice said. “But there are these shoots of hope that allow us to navigate generational trauma, and Emily Bronte guides us through it without being totally judgmental, but saying, actually, you can fight this, if you choose.”

 Rice’s production is a hybrid between play and musical, with the live band, Greek chorus, and original song and lyrics.

“I really wanted Cathy and Heathcliff to feel like punk rock stars. They wanted to destroy the world, both of them full of anger, full of hatred, full of energy,” she said. While Bronte and punk are not traditionally associated, there’s something that seems right about it – all that raw emotion, rebellion.

“I wrote a song called Cathy’s Curse really early on. And I wanted her to look like the hottest, wildest rock star I’ve ever seen, because I felt that was her pivot point.”

Although the show has been on stage for over three years, Rice is excited to bring it to a new audience. 

“I really hope that they give it a go, that they can’t believe how entertaining a big classic can be.

“I feel that hope bubbles up and that actually, no matter how terrible the world can get, that actually, individuals can make a difference. (Lydia Jupp)

The Atlantic discusses the work of Literature Novbel Prize winner Han Kang.

History still seeps in, and all the more so when the details have largely been forgotten or obscured. Memories of horrors that younger South Koreans can no longer name produce uncanny symptoms in their bodies and dreams. Han, who is also a poet, commands an impressive arsenal of literary devices, and in her hands, the national repression of trauma—what Milan Kundera called “organized forgetting”—even affects the weather. The pathetic fallacy hasn’t been put to such good use in fiction since Wuthering Heights. (Judith Shulevitz)

Yahoo! Entertainment has ranked '23 of the Best Orson Welles Movies' and Jane Eyre makes it to number 14.

14. Jane Eyre (1943)

When his RKO contract expired and he was free to work for other studios, Welles took the opportunity to play Edward Rochester in an adaptation of Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre, as it would earn money for his own projects.

Director Robert Stevenson mounts a handsome version of the novel from a script he wrote with Brave New World author Aldous Huxley and Welles’s one-time collaborator John Houseman. Stevenson emphasizes the gothic elements of the tale, which matches Welles’s smoldering take on Rochester’s romance with Joan Fontaine’s Jane. (Joe George)

More adaptations of Jane Eyre as The Northern Echo shares pictures from the shooting of Jane Eyre 1970 near Tan Hill Inn.

In 1970, the remote and windswept Tan Hill Inn in Swaledale, North Yorkshire, became a film set for the adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel Jane Eyre.

Starring George C. Scott as Mr Rochester and Susannah York as the spirited and resilient Jane Eyre, the production sought out the inn for its atmospheric qualities and its striking isolation, which matched the moody tones of the story.

Thanks to some incredible images brought back out of the archives, courtesy of former Northern Echo photographer Ian Wright, we have been able to revisit the day the well-known venue was turned into a film set.

The Tan Hill Inn, famed as the highest pub in England, served as the perfect backdrop for the rugged Yorkshire moors described in Brontë's novel. Its weathered stone exterior and remote location added authenticity and a sense of place to the film, bringing Brontë's landscapes vividly to life on screen.

Susannah York, cast as Jane Eyre, brought both elegance and tenacity to the role.

Known for her fiercely independent spirit, York was a fascinating choice for the character of Jane, who defied social conventions to follow her own path. [...]

The inn’s location, perched on an isolated hill in the Yorkshire Dales, is subject to unpredictable weather, which added to the production’s sense of realism, according to many accounts of how the filming went.

Despite the challenges, the production left a lasting legacy for both the Tan Hill Inn and the surrounding area.

Visitors to the inn often remark on its cinematic history, with many drawn to the pub for its connection to this classic film adaptation. (Patrick Gouldsbrough)

Finally, two scholarly articles for today: on Palatinate, a contributor discusses 'representations of the natural world in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre' while the Moments of Being Substack looks at Anne Brontë as 'a moral tutor'.