Brontë Bantam at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

This is quite surreal. The Telegraph and Argus reports that the Bradford City football team have a new

mascot called Brontë Bantam who has been to the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Bradford City have announced their new mascot, Brontë Bantam, in an announcement video that links to world-renowned authors Charlotte and Emily Brontë. 

The club have now created a sibling duo of mascots that truly represent the community and family atmosphere that surrounds the club.

But they have also done it by bringing in the local area, specifically highlighting Haworth and the Brontë sisters, a beloved part of the West Yorkshire area and its history. (Sophie Bates)

You can see a video of the visit here (beware: it's VERY weird).

The Globe and Mail has arts editor Judith Pereira and book critic Emily Donaldson answer readers' questions about summer reads.

How do you approach reading classics? I find it hard to get past the older language.

Donaldson: I think the main challenge is attuning your ear to the unfamiliar language and pacing. But what feels awkward on page five often starts to feel natural by page fifty.

Start with classics that are genuine page-turners: Jane Eyre, The Picture of Dorian Grey, The Count of Monte Cristo and virtually anything by Austen or Dickens all have strong narrative momentum, making the language easier to settle into than, say, behemoths like Moby-Dick, Middlemarch or The Brothers Karamazov.

And do not feel obligated to slog through every book you try. Some became classics because they changed literature, not because they’re rollicking yarns. I also don’t think the goal shouldn’t be to check titles off a list – it’s to find the books that have earned their reputation because they still have the power to move/grab us.

The Yorkshire Post features photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn.

Hardy and Free has been created by award-winning Yorkshire photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn and takes its name from a line in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights: “I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free...”

It was originally commissioned by the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth in 2023 as part of its contemporary arts programme and then a new series of large-scale portraits with audio from the women involved, was created for Bradford 2025, UK City of Culture and adorned Kirkgate Shopping Centre.

The photographs, which are three metres by two metres each are hung in a huge barn where they used to show the pigeons on the Yorkshire Show Ground.

Hardy and Free explores the relationship between 12 contemporary women and the natural world, all sharing a profound emotional link with the landscapes that shape them. (Catherine Scott)

The Ada News has an article on Wuthering Heights and Los Alamos Reporter has resources for local people to get ready for The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever on August 1st.