Charlotte Brontë on the Wall

Julian Pierce in The Yorkshire Post thinks that "Britain needs to rediscover the art of delivering great ideas";

The Great Exhibition of 1851 wasn’t done by halves. It wasn’t value engineered to within an inch of its life and (I’m betting) it didn’t take a month to make a simple decision. That exhibition – designed to set out what this country had and could offer the world – is still referenced in textbooks as an example of Britain leading on the world stage. It was outward looking, but confident in the country’s collective national abilities. Leading thinkers and doers of the day were there. Michael Faraday, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Lewis Carroll, Karl Marx and Alfred Tennyson were all in attendance. The perfect blend of science, philosophy and culture, under one giant glass roof of the (at the time, temporary) Crystal Palace. Queen Victoria herself allegedly visited more than 30 times. 

Clare.fm interviews the artist Marcus Vallboehmer:

From painting the walls of his family home as a child in Germany to creating eye-catching public murals here in west Clare, artist Marcus Vallboehmer has turned a lifelong passion for colour into a successful career.  

Now living in Farrihy, near Doonbeg, Marcus is the artist behind the striking new mural of Charlotte Brontë on the White Walls in Kilkee, celebrating the famous novelist’s connection to the seaside town.  

Picture Source.

Summer readings in The Irish Independent:

Summer is also the time for adventure, whether that’s white water rafting or Finnegans Wake. You have energy, Vitamin D and oceans of time. Plus, sun and heat are the enemy of the screen. You can’t doomscroll on a beach.

I remember exactly where I was when I first read Wuthering Heights (on a beach in Brittany), Catch-22 (a beach in southern Italy) and The Beach (a pool in Ibiza). Also, the frustration of not being able to escape completely into Emma Cline’s The Girls on a beach in Kerry when my kids were small. And many more.

WWD discusses the Ashi Studio Fall 2026 Couture:

Before the show, Ashi said he leaned further into the “Wuthering Heights” feeling of his spring effort and thought back to the Surrealist Ball given by Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild in 1972, a soirée with the likes of Salvador Dalí, Princess Grace of Monaco and Audrey Hepburn in attendance. (Lily Templeton)

Varsity wonders about the possible benefits of the upcoming East of Eden adaptation for John Steinbeck's  knowledge:

The question of adapting brilliant literature is not newly raised by this forthcoming limited series. Modern films have proven time and time again that renewed audience interest in their source texts can arise from the adaptive process. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, for example, saw viewers picking up copies of Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece, while Emerald Fennell’s interpretation of Wuthering Heights brought Brontë’s text back off the shelf, be it through inspiration or outrage. The texts didn’t need a spotlight shone on them, but their filmic twins formed a fruitful relationship of engagement between the different media. (Dan Porritt)

Today on BBC Four, a new chance to watch Jane Eyre 1944 (23:50 GMT). The Ada News publishes a extense summary of Wuthering Heights.