"The greatest story about what we think love is like when we haven’t experienced it"

Samantha Ellis publishes a piece in The Guardian trying to explain why Wuthering Heights is not "the greatest love story of all time" but something much more complex, troublesome and brilliant:

The most astonishing thing about the first trailer for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is not the extreme closeup of dough being kneaded into submission. It’s not that in the lead roles Margot Robbie is blonde and 35, and Jacob Elordi is white, when Emily Brontë described Cathy as a teen brunette and Heathcliff as “a dark-skinned gypsy”.  (...)

The most astonishing thing is that the trailer says Wuthering Heights is “the greatest love story of all time”. Which is almost exactly how the 1939 Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon film was trailed – as “the greatest love story of our time … or any time!” Have we learned nothing? I am not talking about the fact that (like Oberon’s!) Robbie’s wedding dress is white, which is not period-correct. This has exercised many people on the internet. I’m more worried about the fact that almost a century since Olivier’s film, we are still calling it a love story – a great one! The greatest! It’s being released the day before Valentine’s Day! – when what actually happens is that Cathy rejects Heathcliff because she’s a snob, and he turns into a psychopath. (...)

It’s true it’s low on laughs. It’s no romcom. Instead of a meet-cute there’s Cathy’s father bringing home a ragged orphan he’s found starving on the streets of Liverpool. The boy-loses-girl part is all there, but the boy-gets-girl ending never quite happens. The real question is whether it’s too brutal for the screen – Andrea Arnold’s raw, stripped-down 2011 version is probably the closest to the book’s dark energy, and even she stuck to the first half of the book.

There’s so much cruelty. Heathcliff is abused by Cathy’s brother Hindley. He then goads Hindley into drinking himself to death, takes his house and abuses Hindley’s son. He tricks Cathy’s sister-in-law into marriage, beats her, calls her a slut, hangs her dog and gaslights her, insisting this is what she wants. Cathy is too narcissistic to care about any of this. So even ignoring her death and the second half of the novel, it’s a lot. If Fennell continues to the (bittersweet) end she’ll have to deal with Heathcliff abusing his own son and Cathy’s daughter, forcing them to marry, and renting Cathy’s marital home to a middle-aged fop who slashes a ghost girl’s wrists with broken glass. (In a frame narrative. The complexity of the plot is another reason it’s a nightmare to adapt.) (...)

 Perhaps it’s not the greatest love story of all time, our time or any time, but is the greatest story about what we think love is like when we haven’t experienced it.

Keighley News celebrates one of the highlights of the Brontë year, the reopening of the Brontë Birthplace:

The house at Thornton opened to the public for the first time in its 200-year history in March.

Contributions from more than 700 individual investors – together with grants from Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, and the Community Ownership, National Lottery Heritage and Rural England Prosperity funds – led to the property being bought and placed under the care of Brontë Birthplace Ltd, a community benefit society.

An extensive renovation was carried out ahead of the public launch.

And the official opening of the building – as a museum and education centre, with facilities for overnight stays in the historical rooms – was performed in May by Her Majesty Queen Camilla.

Whilst the Brontë siblings are inexorably associated with Haworth – where they lived and drew inspiration for their work from the surrounding moorland – Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne were all born at the house in Thornton.

Brontë Birthplace fundraising co-ordinator, Nigel West, says: "This is an amazing story of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture using its legacy funding and then 770 members contributing – and the formation of a community benefit society – that will protect the Birthplace for the community.

"This was the most important heritage opening anywhere in the UK in 2025, and it is as significant to this country as Shakespeare's birthplace." (Alistair Shand)

Also in Great British Life.

Express visits Haworth, "the gorgeous little village with the UK's best high street".

Haworth is the kind of village that makes you want to slow down and take it all in. Nestled on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, it’s best known as the home of the Brontë sisters, whose novels immortalised the windswept landscape. But the village itself has a story worth exploring, a mix of literary history, industrial heritage, and small-town charm that feels genuine and unpolished.

The village grew around the textile industry in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many of its stone houses were built for workers in the local mills, and the streets still echo that past. Cobbled lanes twist between stone cottages and independent shops, and while tourism has increased over the years, Haworth retains an authenticity that makes it feel like a lived-in place rather than a museum. Today, the Brontë Parsonage Museum sits at the top of the main street, a constant reminder of the village’s literary fame, while the moors beyond provide the dramatic backdrop that inspired Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. (...)

It’s easy to see why the Brontës found the surrounding landscape so inspiring: dramatic without being forbidding, wild but still inviting. (...)

After dinner, I walked uphill toward the Brontë Parsonage Museum. The street narrows as it rises, with stone cottages gradually giving way to more open space.

Even without entering the museum, wandering around the gardens and the lane leading up to it is evocative. Low walls, rough grass, and flower beds frame the house, while beyond the gate the moors roll endlessly into the distance.

It’s easy to imagine the Brontës pacing these paths, their minds wandering as far as the open land before them. (Aditi Rane)

The Craven Herald & Pioneer coincidentally also has an article about how the Old Post Office in Haworth has been named the cosiest place to eat by The Yorkshireman. 

The Jerusalem Post reviews the latest novel by John Irving, Queen Esther:

Meanwhile, Irving returns to his signature subjects: circumcision, tattoos, wrestling, and the endless possibilities of sexual attraction and intercourse. He examines works by the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Arthur Schnitzler, and Anne Frank, the films High Noon and The Seventh Seal, and songs by Bob Dylan. (Glenn C. Altschuler)

The photographer James Glossop shares his favourite images of 2025 in The Times, including one of a Northern Ballet’s performance of Jane Eyre on March 20, 2025.

SWR (Germany) interviews the writer Anjet Daanje, who now publishes the German translation of her novel Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris:

„Das Lied von Storch und Dromedar“ ist ein multiperspektivischer Roman, der durch Emily Brontës doppeltes Erzählen im Roman „Sturmhöhe“ inspiriert wurde.

Dadurch wirkt Daanjes Erzählen wie ein postmodernes Puzzle und besitzt zugleich die Eleganz eines englischen Gesellschaftsromans.

Anjet Daanje sagt: „Man könnte sagen, dass dies das gemeinsame Lied von elf Personen ist. Die elf Kapitel bilden zusammen eine Art Gedicht, also ein Lied. Der ganze Roman ist ein bisschen wie ein Musikstück angelegt. Mit Themen, die variiert werden.“

Zum Beispiel Geschwisterbeziehungen. Klavierspiel. Oder der Umgang mit Zeit.

„Ich sehe „Das Lied“ aber auch als Ballade. Früher wurden Balladen gesungen, um Geschichten zu erzählen. Und das macht Anjet in diesem Buch sehr stark. Und das nennt sie dann ein „Lied“, sagt Anton Scheepstra.

Daanjes Ballade umfasst drei Jahrhunderte. Sie beginnt in England, geht weiter unter Auswanderern in den USA, macht im Ersten Weltkrieg einen Abstecher nach Frankreich, im Zweiten Weltkrieg nach England und kehrt am Ende geradezu heim nach Groningen.

„Das letzte Kapitel spielt in den Niederlanden. Das hatte ich zuerst gar nicht vor", berichtet Daanje. „Ich dachte eher an England. Aber dann recherchierte ich zu Glockentürmen und dachte: Die gibt es auch bei uns. Warum den Roman also nicht in den Niederlanden abrunden?“ (Katharina Borchardt) (Translation)

And of course, Wuthering Heights 2026, features in many list of the films to watch next year: The Tab, Evoke, Glamour, Breaking News, The Journal, Soap Central, Elle, Forbes, Euronews, Time Out... The Times of India includes Emily Brontë in a list of haunting lines from books and classics.

AnneBrontë.org posts about the Patrick-Maria wedding preparations in 1812.