The drama mustered just around 17.19 million yuan (about 2.49 million US dollars) as of Thursday, with 2.03 million yuan raked in on its opening day last Friday, according to Maoyan, one of China’s major online ticketing platforms. Although the first week’s ticket sales do not necessarily determine the overall box office revenue of a movie, such disparity is striking, especially given that the source novel, a reading material for many schools in China, enjoys a devoted following among Chinese readers. So what accounts for the film’s tepid performance during its debut week in the world’s secondlargest movie market? Part of the explanation lies in timing. Unlike many international markets, where the film opened around Valentine’s Day, its release in China came during a box-office lull, just after the lucrative Spring Festival holiday had ended.

“I could have told Heathcliff’s history, all that you need hear, in half a dozen words.” We are only a few chapters into Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights when Nelly Dean, the servant, foster-sister, and—crucially—narrator apologizes for how longwinded her tale has become. At this point, in fact, she’s barely begun. And just as Nelly is merely one of several narrators in Brontë’s novel, her version of “Heathcliff’s history” is far from the only one. The proliferating narrators set a model for readers’ attempts to adapt and transform Wuthering Heights—attempts that are nearly as old as the novel itself. 

These include, for instance, Charlotte Brontë’s 1850 preface to a new edition of her sister’s novel, in which she sought to explain (or excuse) the “coarseness” that had so shocked its first readers (other critics had deemed it “puzzling,” “baffling,” a work of “naked imaginative power”). At the time, Charlotte was still mourning her sister, who had died, at 30, in December 1848. Her preface can be understood as an early adaptation of the novel—an effort to translate it into a more legible idiom. This version of Emily Brontë, however, is nothing if not contradictory: a “homebred country girl” who was also “hewn in a wild workshop.” A savant that could not be held responsible for her creations: “Having formed these beings she did not know what she had done.”

“A publicist’s masterpiece” is how Anne Carson described the preface, in her 1995 poem “The Glass Essay”: “Like someone carefully not looking at a scorpion / crouched on the arm of the sofa.” To be fair, Charlotte had instantly recognized Emily’s gifts when she’d stumbled across her poems several years earlier. It was Charlotte who hatched the idea of publishing the three sisters’ “Poems By Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell,” despite Emily’s initial anger and reluctance. (It was also Charlotte who planned a trip to their London editors to finally expose their true identities; while her sister Anne accompanied her, Emily, typically, refused to go along.) In “The Glass Essay,” Carson’s homage to Wuthering Heights, the speaker is in the throes of a breakup and reads Emily Brontë during a visit to her mother; the poem muses over how many readers have projected onto Emily their own anxieties and desires. 

Carson’s speaker realizes she may be one of them: “I feel I am turning into Emily Brontë, / my lonely life around me like a moor.” Such lines ironically allude to what critic Lucasta Miller has called The Brontë Myth, but also, inevitably, end up trafficking in the same romanticized idea of a solitary female writer on the lonely moor.  By now it’s well established that the Brontës didn’t grow up in a remote, abandoned setting but rather nearby a bustling industrial town; that their father, Patrick, was hardly the belligerent, cold patriarch he was made out to be in Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1857 The Life of Charlotte Brontë. We know that Emily Brontë’s rich intellectual and literary inheritance included the works of Sir Walter Scott, the stories of James Hogg, and the poetry of Byron and Shelley; in other words, that Wuthering Heights is hardly a work of spontaneous creative genius. Already in 1905, Henry James was ruing what had become the “romantic tradition of the Brontës,” with “their dreary, their tragic history, their loneliness and poverty of life” a myth that “elbowed out” a true appreciation of their work. 

Still, there’s a reason the most powerful myths survive long past the moment of their origin. Many have decried Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” as an unworthy adaptation, the scare quotes of the title indicating Fennell’s casual disregard of her source material. The problem, however, is not infidelity. Across over a century of Wuthering Heights adaptations, the best of them have ambitiously transposed the original’s language and setting, as well as its details of plot. In doing so, they’ve rebutted Charlotte Brontë’s fear that the novel must prove “alien and unfamiliar,” its meaning “unintelligible, and—where intelligible—repulsive” to anyone outside Yorkshire. That isn’t because Wuthering Heights is a timeless love story, whatever that would mean, but rather because it is a haunting, though utterly recognizable, portrayal of the modern world’s cruelty, exploitation, and violence. This kind of violence, as Brontë teaches us, obeys no borders; it lies not behind or beyond but well within our pious scripts of love, property, and law. Any poet, screenwriter, or novelist wishing to pay tribute to Brontë’s novel would do well to grapple with this bleaker vision. [...]

Despite Nelly’s best intentions, however, Wuthering Heights rejects the Victorian ideal of domestic bliss implied in the marriage plot. Nelly may choose to believe that the law will win out, and that it is essentially good: “There’s law in the land, thank God! there is,” she warns Heathcliff at one point. In doing so she ignores the fact that Heathcliff’s manipulations, coercions, and acquisitions are perfectly legal.

In that sense, Nelly’s narration uncannily rehearses and anticipates a long history of adaptations of Wuthering Heights—beginning with Charlotte Brontë’s own attempt to translate, and to domesticate, her sister’s novel—that try to manage the intensity of a story more frightening and radical than many would like it to be. To see Heathcliff as a romantic hero, as so many have done, is a novice’s mistake. But to see him as a victim or revolutionary is an equally strong misreading. As the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton once wrote, Heathcliff’s rise symbolizes “at once the triumph of the oppressed over capitalism and the triumph of capitalism over the oppressed.” Or, to put it in Heathcliff’s own words, “The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them.”

This, unsurprisingly, is an idea that most adaptations of Wuthering Heights have resisted. Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is no exception. The few lines in her film that are culled directly from Brontë—“I am Heathcliff”; “I cannot life without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”; “Why did you betray your own heart?” —sound tinny and flat, even half-hearted, in the mouths of Elordi and Margot Robbie. In the novel, Heathcliff utters the last of these lines in his final scene of reunion with Catherine, hours before her death. In Fennell’s version, he pronounces them just before the infidelity begins. As with the other details meant to shock—the close-ups of viscous fluids; a BDSM-coded dog collar Isabella Linton is made to wear—this latest adaptation translates the novel’s real transgressiveness into the commonplace trespass of adultery.

Still, as a story about how stories are translated and adapted, seized, and reworked, Wuthering Heights set the stage for even these flattening readings. What can we bear to see, and what do we choose not to look at? Why is it so much easier to consent to culturally available scripts? Even Brontë’s novel ends with the promise of a happy marriage between Cathy Linton and Hareton. That ending nevertheless lies beyond the book’s narrative, just out of view. By now, Catherine Earnshaw is dead, and so is Heathcliff— “but the country folks, if you ask them, would swear on the Bible that he walks,” just as we too will continue to be haunted by Wuthering Heights. (Victoria Baena)

Greg reports the trips were a success but even before the new Wuthering Heights film came out, customers started asking about options to visit the Bronte sites, leading him to research the subject over the winter.

The Bronte tour starts in York, with the first stop being Thorp Green Hall, where Anne Bronte where Anne Bronte and her brother 'Branwell' [sic] were employed.

Then, after refreshments, the tour heads to Saltaire and the salt mills to show the backdrop to the life of the Brontes before heading to Thornton and visiting The Bronte Birthplace Museum.

Here, Greg gives a private tour of their birthplace, before moving on to Howarth [sic] to visit the Bronte Parsonage Museum. Then, they explore the town before heading up Penistone Hill, and up towards the beak moors of Top Witherns, the inspiration for Wuthering Heights.

Greg explained: “All through the morning I will tell my guests stories of the lives of the Brontes form their early start right through to their tragic deaths.” (Darren Greenwood)

Wuthering Heights – or should we say "Wuthering Heights" – has been one of the most-talked about movies of the year to date, for better or worse, and the conversation is set to continue as it's now confirmed its imminent digital release date.

Warner Bros has confirmed that you'll be able to buy or rent the movie from Monday 30 March. You can pre-order Wuthering Heights right now on Prime Video and AppleTV to be able to watch it as soon as it's released next Monday.

Wuthering Heights is still out in cinemas if you want the big-screen experience, with the movie currently the third-biggest release of 2026 with an impressive $234.4 million to date worldwide. (Ian Sandwell)

Due to the multiple new movies, the period romance drama has dropped out of the top 5 and is at #10 this weekend. The film grossed only $475k on its 6th three-day weekend at the domestic box office. The movie declined by 71.6% only from last weekend and lost a harsh 1,300 theaters in North America. The film is running on only 601 screens in its home territory. After its 6th weekend, the domestic total of the Margot Robbie starrer is $83.3 million [via Box Office Mojo].

Trade analyst Luiz Fernando‘s report reveals that Wuthering Heights is still experiencing a strong run at the overseas markets. Internationally, the romance drama raked in $3.1 million in its 6th weekend across 78 markets. With just a 48.3% drop from last weekend, the movie’s overseas total has hit $151.1 million cume. Allied to the domestic total of $83.3 million, the worldwide collection of the period drama is $234.4 million. It is tracking to earn around $250 million in its global run.

According to media reports, the Margot Robbie-starrer period drama was made on a budget of $80 million, and thus its break-even target is $200 million, applying the 2.5x multiplier rule. The period drama has earned $34.4 million above its break-even point, representing a 17.2% gain. It is in a profitable territory and is expected to continue for a bit longer. (Esita Mallik)

MJ: Obviously, the production design provides a huge contrast between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and I was wondering what kind of conversations you had with Emerald to sonically delineate the two? Because the Thrushcross tracks are so much lighter and more magical, compared to the darker, sinister tones of the Heights—how did that develop in your conversations?

AW: Yeah, Emerald really loved the idea of these two distinct worlds. The thing with Thrushcross is that it had to be intriguing, like a box of chocolates, but that actually ultimately it’s all surface. It doesn’t fulfill Cathy. So we wanted to make sure that as beautiful as Thrushcross is as a place, that emotionally it can’t satisfy Cathy. Therefore, the music with Heathcliff has more yearning, and a more emotional connection.

With the Heights, Emerald definitely wanted something unsettling and more unforgiving. The Wuthering music had to tie into Earnshaw (Martin Clunes) where her father is a trigger for her—one moment he’s jovial and the next he’s really got under her skin. And that comes back when she goes to see him at Christmas, and he’s back to that same taunting. So yeah, they’re very different palettes.

In the Heights, one of the things I was proud that we did was we put the yearning b-section from the main theme, very slow and kind of twisted, as the camera pans back on the building. It’s fractured amongst the different parts of the string section, so it is a sign of the tragedy to come.

MJ: There are two tracks near the start—“Kindest Man Alive” and “Very Important Family”—that use kind of discordant thrumming and drumming in a dark/sinister way, also very foreboding and portentous. How did you build these two tracks?

AW: Emerald liked the idea of Earnshaw riding out to the pub where he drinks and gambles, and of course, we’ve just had the hanging scene, so we both liked the idea of tying in the sound of this foreboding hanging drum. Earnshaw going out is of course nothing new for Cathy, but she’s just been to her first hanging. So she’s in a particularly vulnerable state, she’s just learned about things that are changing her. So the drum connecting her to that nightmare was something that Emerald really liked the idea of. 

And there’s these kind of grunting, visceral cellos, and we did some strange, scraping bowed guitar—stuff that sounds like a perversion of a folk palette really was what Emerald was interested in. The strings are intimate, you can feel the kind of tactile touch of the playing, and the sliding, twisting, slow version of part of the theme—that was a big part of it. Then we wanted a more playful version of it for “Very Important Family,” where it comes back to this prideful Earnshaw feeling, using banjos and this slightly perverse folk sound.

MJ: At what stage did you know that you’d be working around the concept album by Charli xcx, and how did you find the process of composing tracks around her songs, which play a big role in the film’s soundscape?

AW: Emerald and her amazing producer Josie did mention when I went to set that Charli was going to write some stuff. These creative moments are always interesting when you start out with an idea of something that might happen, and of course, you don’t know quite where it will lead, but Charli then just wrote all these incredible tracks, so Emerald was exploring them in the edit. 

Ultimately when she settled on Charli’s track “House” for the opening, we really liked that dark, folky, slightly ritualistic feel, but it needed a bit more scope for the scene with the size of the crowd, so I added a kind of ritualistic folk rhythm over the top of it, and some low choir, and some low harps and tubular bell. Sounds that are a bit more idiomatic to a classic hanging scene. But really the essence of the track did so much, of course John Cale’s narration was really interesting, his poem that is a big part of the track too. So it was just adding some orchestration and scope to it, especially when the camera pans back and you see the house for the very first time from a distance, so that was really fun.

And a lot of her tracks just worked really well as they were. “Open Up” was absolutely beautiful and went into the film very easily. Actually what was lovely about “Open Up” is that we did an instrumental reprise of it, where I added some strings. I think emotionally that’s a big link between the score and the final act, as you’re heading into the final act, we bring “Open Up” back as an instrumental when Heathcliff leaves for the second time, and that was lovely, such a beautiful song. And Charli’s producer Finn Keane was so great, he would send us different versions of songs to work with. So Finn and I talked quite a bit. Of course Charli, as a major pop star, was doing a thousand things, but she also did some really interesting extra breathing on “House” and interesting layers that were very useful.

One of the really fun ones to get right was actually the moment that “Funny Mouth” appears. It’s such a good song, it’s both seductive but really quite dark, and it has some really interesting chord changes in it too. There’s the moment when Heathcliff turns around and they kiss for the first time, which uses my main theme, where they’re kissing in the Needle’s Eye—where they first bond as children. It cuts back to Nelly (Hong Chau) and Cathy, and Nelly says, “Does he know that you’re pregnant?” and there’s the decision that Cathy proceeds with this affair, so it had to have a dark longing to it. “Funny Mouth” just had such an interesting tone, getting the transition into that was quite a fun challenge, but it’s such a great track.

MJ: “Kiss Me and Be Damned” is the pivotal scene where Cathy and Heathcliff finally kiss for the first time, and acknowledge their feelings for one another. It has to be romantic, but you definitely still keep the sadness there—how did you manage that balance?

AW: Yeah, that was really what Emerald wanted, she wanted to live right in this space between hope and despair. So, starting with this hopeful yearning as children, and that’s a really interesting place to take it because the audience knows that Emerald is doing something different with the film. There will be unexpected things, so we wonder: How is this going to unfold? Is it ultimately going to allow for more of a union between the two lovers than the book allows? Similarly, in Ian McEwan’s Atonement (adapted into a film in 2007), you think they’ve had this life together and then it’s so gutting when you realize that was all just an atonement through the book. So, yeah riding that line between an ethereal sound and a more haunted sound. A lot of that comes from holding back.

In the case of “Kiss Me and Be Damned,” that is a departure from the book. That moment in the book, Heathcliff leaves. So Emerald wanted this to be a very special moment where it definitely does err on the side of slightly more ethereal. But the theme was really designed to do that, especially in the b-section and the chords, the melody goes down and the chords go up. So you get this kind of conflict and a lot of descending leans in the melody that give you that sense of finality. It’s a piece that’s constantly trying to ascend, but it never quite gets there, it always comes back down.

MJ: The whole finale [last four tracks] is completely heart-wrenching. How do you decide what to reach for (e.g. cellos, the minor key) that you know will just have a shattering effect on the audience?

AW: I mean that final act was such a career highlight, as I mentioned when we were recording it with Emerald and Margot there. It was such a gift, as a composer, to have. I think, with just a few small pauses, it’s around 14 minutes in the film, almost non-stop. It really had to be worked out as a whole. I started working on it reasonably early in the process, because it was ultimately the emotional bedrock of the whole film. 

It was a tough nut to crack, because it all had to be conceived in one journey. One fundamental feeling had to be able to tie it all together. From the moment of Nelly going to Wuthering Heights all the way through to Heathcliff saying, “haunt me then, drive me mad,” I played it through all at once and was like “OK this is gonna work, this emotionally connects as one experience.” You need to make sure it’s in the right key and the right register, and most of all the right pace. It needed some pace to underpin the riding and the sense of urgency that Heathcliff has to get to Cathy, but also this slow yearning and relentless changing of the chords. 

I think Emerald and I knew that the corridor had to connect, we knew that this sense of flow had to connect through to when Heathcliff walks upstairs into the house. But I think we both knew that on that very first shot of the house, we needed the ring out of the previous section, and just a moment of silence, and wondering what’s going to happen next. Then the score creeps back in, picking up back where it left off, and the cello solo plays at its most vulnerable and intimate as he’s walking down the corridor. I think there’s a version of it, still at that moment, we’re sort of edging what might happen. Because we haven’t seen Cathy yet, as the audience, so again it’s riding this tone of “is this about to flourish into a really beautiful piece, or is it going to turn?” And actually we do turn really dark. The cello solo disappears up into these quite ethereal, ghostly harmonics that are almost like an organ as you see her lying there. Yeah, it was really special to work on it. In a way, recalling the journey with you gets me quite emotional myself.

Emerald has these important moments of hallucination in the sequence, the most dramatic, large-scale moment in the score is as Heathcliff is riding, and then the score settles down, and you see Heathcliff with Cathy, and then, similar to Atonement, there’s the gutting realization that he didn’t make it. That was such a crucial anchor to hit because that’s what makes the next scene so devastating, that she never knew he was coming. 

Then we get this final runway to the incredibly famous Emily Brontë lines and you get the coda of the theme, which you don’t hear that much with the most yearning section. I mentioned earlier the theme going down and the chords rising against it. Well here in the coda, the theme goes up as well as the chords into this more transcendental state when we hear those famous lines. We went bigger with that than maybe I expected, but Emerald was sitting next to me as I was doing it, and it was a really special moment where we were really feeding off each other. I was reacting to her, and she was reacting to what I was doing. I think in career highlights, if I never worked again and somebody asked me what my favorite moment working with a director was, I’d say it was that, right there.

MJ: I want to ask about my favorite track “I Will Wait for You,” which is basically a reprise of C&H from the start—how did you go about developing a sound that would evoke young Cathy & Heathcliff and then referencing that at the end to destroy our emotions?

AW: Thank you, it’s my favorite as well, and actually, I’m really glad it’s that moment. It’s also Jacob’s beautiful dialogue over the top (Heathcliff’s letters to Cathy), and that little soundbite has got I think 2,000 videos on TikTok—that’s the bit people have attached to. It was really important that, structurally, Emerald really wanted to build this bond as children. So “C+H” is about them making this promise to each other that they will be there for one another, no matter what. And it was really important that that would come back at that pivotal moment. It’s so devastating that scene because he’s writing these letters and she’s thinking about him, but she’s not getting them. So for Emerald, those two moments were the places where the theme needed to work. And you know, the photography is so devastating there, as Cathy’s hand is reaching out for him.

It’s an important runway for the film, where we’ve been in this really dark place where Heathcliff’s gone off with Isabella (Alison Oliver), and then the moment of the letters—“I Will Wait for You” has to prepare us for what’s coming, emotionally. And for me, the most important bit is when you see Cathy sitting on the bed and she’s imagining young Heathcliff holding her ankle—so that bit was really special to get right. In retrospect, I think what Emerald liked about it was that it almost felt like an old English hymn, almost something you could brush the dust off, speaking to the timeless nature of the story. That’s what she really liked about [it], and it had this plaintive quality, like calling out desperately, like a prayer. 

What was useful about that theme was that we could in some places remove the theme altogether, and just have the chords, and it would tell the story. That’s what I love about a good piece of music, when the chords themselves take you on that journey. There’s a moment when Cathy has essentially stood Heathcliff up, and then she tells him, “We have to stop this affair, we can’t do this anymore,” and he comes to her in the garden, and we reprise “C+H” there as well, but it’s just the chords. It comes back to this idea of Edgar (Shazad Latif) knowing that he’s never, ever going to be able to compete with this timeless love. And so hearing that kind of hauntingly in the garden was a really fun discovery. The journey of the chords was very useful for the story.

MJ: “Be with Me Always” references “Dark Eyed Sailor” at the end—so you’ve got the folk influence as well as the Charli songs. This was always going to be one of the most important tracks as it’s the culmination of the film—how do you think the score as a whole builds to this track, as the finale?

AW: It’s such a beautiful traditional folk melody, and Olivia Cheney does her version of it as songs when Cathy goes to get married and she’s thinking about Heathcliff, and then when he finally comes back (after 5 years away)—that as a bookend was really great. Emerald loved the idea of using the traditional melody, at its most innocent and most pure, just on a simple piano with one hand, no embellishments. Just very soft folk viola strings around it that then build into this very grand ending. She was so clever to use that song, so I loved doing our version of it at the end. 

And it really comes from this place of innocence—Owen (Cooper) and Charlotte (Mellington) who so brilliantly play younger Heathcliff and Cathy, they just have this very tender innocence to them and that’s what that piece really captured on the piano. The idea that in a different time, if things had gone differently, this is where we might have ended up. It was tricky to craft how it unfolded, but it seems to have worked well with audiences. If no one had cried until then, we generally get them at that moment. (Fiona Underhill)

Race is obviously a huge part of the book –  it’s what strains Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship, and what makes it so easy for Hindley to force him into servitude. Heathcliff’s ethnicity is never disclosed in the book. However it often describes his dark skin, eyes, and hair, in addition to mentioning his mother as ain this role. Especially in this day and age, whitewashing is a disgusting thing to be pr

n “Indian Queen.” Yet in Fennell’s movie adaptation she casts Jacob Elordi, a white man, 

omoting with a huge theatrical release. There are plenty of talented actors who are people of color that could have played Heathcliff. Even if his ethnicity is ambiguous, there is little to debate: in the book, he is a person of color, which plays a vital role in how the entire story plays out. [...]

To diminish work that mirrors real life experiences in this way completely erases the international heaviness of the topics of the book. This was someone’s real life. There were, and are, hundreds of thousands of people being abused and hurt by class and racism. Especially during the time period when Bronte released Wuthering Heights, those topics were unusual for an author to write about it. She was revolutionary for telling this story and including racism and classism in a negative light. This movie is simply erasing that, all the while the creative leads are admitting to it. 

The “Wuthering Heights” adaptation appears aesthetically pleasing and somewhat interesting, but as a separate entity from the book. It’s erasing the main themes, replacing them with explicit scenes and inaccurate costuming (mesh in the 18th Century?) with an entirely, and wrongly, white cast. Wuthering Heights is a literary classic, revolutionary for its time and somehow Emerald Fennell has managed to turn it into a spicy whitewashed romance, marketed in the trailer as “the greatest love story ever told.” (Laura Sands)

The hairs on the back of my neck tingle as I stare at the mourning bracelet once worn by Charlotte Brontë. Its purple-red garnet glimmers from the centre of a band woven with the hair of her sisters, Emily and Anne. Moments before, while touring the other displays of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, I’d eyeballed the sofa where Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë lost her life to tuberculosis, aged just 30. Museum volunteers around me chat about Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights film adaptation and one tells me some 500 visitors walked through these doors a day after the film’s release – close to double the numbers they received over Valentine’s Day weekend last year.

In 2026, many travellers will be set-jetting across the Yorkshire Dales to see where Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi acted out the latest film’s tempestuous scenes. But after a surge in sales of the original novel, there will be others, like me, who’ll flock to Haworth for a Brontë inspired literary tour, with the Brontë’s parsonage home at its heart. The mourning bracelet that captures my attention inspired the replica Robbie wore to the film’s premiere. The surrounding village and moorlands, meanwhile, make up Brontë Country, the real inspiration for Wuthering Heights.

It doesn’t take long for me to pull on my hiking boots and make for Haworth Moor. It’s here where the Brontës would roam with their dog Grasper, playing “brigands and bandits” and these wild, heather-clad heights instantly take me back to my Yorkshire childhood.

From Penistone Country Park, just outside the village, I ramble along sodden, rock-strewn bridleways to reach the ale-coloured Brontë falls that gushes into Sladen Beck. I stand on its so-called “Brontë Bridge” beside skeletal trees and spot “Charlotte’s stone” where the namesake author purportedly sat. The ascent from here, past boggy ferns and dilapidated dry-stone walls, takes me to the loftier heights of Top Withens. Although the now-demolished Gothic High Sunderland Hall in Halifax was the apparent inspiration for the Earnshaw’s home, this ruined farmhouse is believed to have inspired Emily’s Wuthering Heights setting. Thrushcross Grange was possibly inspired by nearby Ponden Hall. There’s a beauty to the bleakness up here, even when an icy squall freezes my cheeks during the descent.

My stay in Haworth is Steam View Cottage, a stone’s throw from Haworth’s Grade II-listed Central Park. Its claw-foot bath provides post-hike soaks, and two of its bedrooms cocoon guests beneath third-floor eaves. In the living room, the owner has filled a dresser with an array of Brontë books and from the cottage windows, I spot the Keighley & Worth Valley steam train – of The Railway Children fame – tooting through the valley.

A short walk from here is the steep cobbled Main Street where traditional millstone grit shops and inns, blackened by the soot of the 19th century’s textile mills, speak to Haworth’s industrial past. There are nods to the Brontës at every turn: the shop where Emily bought her stationary; the Barraclough clockmakers (now the Hawthorn restaurant) that made the Brontë’s grandfather clock, and the Black Bull inn where punters sip Brontë-themed ales and snap the ill-fated Brontë brother Branwell’s chair. Those keen to flex their writing skills can attend author’s talks at the Wave of Nostalgia bookshop or check out the Brontë Writing Centre that holds courses throughout the year.

At the top of the street is the parsonage, housing the largest collection of Brontë family artefacts and now opening six days a week in response to its rise in popularity. Next door is the old school room which Patrick Brontë, a champion for education, helped build. My favourite stop is the Old Post Office where the sisters once sent off their manuscripts to publishers under the pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It’s now a characterful café where I savour a breakfast bap and Yorkshire brew, paid for over the original Victorian counter. I also visit St Michaels and All Angels’ church to see the Brontë Family Vault where all members of the Brontë family – except Anne – are buried.

In the nearby village of Keighley, I head to East Riddlesden Hall, a gothic 17th-century farm manor that instantly evokes Wuthering Heights vibes. It was saved from demolition and gifted to the National Trust by the Briggs family who helped form The Brontë Society in 1893.

Inside, its Lights, Camera, Brontë: East Riddlesden Hall on Screen exhibition (free with the £7 venue entry), spotlights the many Wuthering Heights adaptations filmed here. This includes the now-lost 1920s silent drama whose original screenplay is on display. I see the atmospheric Great Hall, with its deep-set fireplace, that inspired filmmakers of the 1992 adaptation, starring Ralph Fiennes (they created a near-exact replica up on the moors). Many believe the room’s 17th-century oak dresser, brought here from Ponden Hall, could be the “pewter-bearing dresser”, from the original book.

My last stop is The Brontë Birthplace, Thornton, on the outskirts of Bradford. This was where Patrick Brontë spent “my happiest years” from 1815-1820 while serving as curator at the nearby, now-ruined, Bell Chapel. Queen Camilla officially opened the home as a Community Benefit Society-run museum after a nine-month restoration last May (self-guided tours from £6.50).

As general manager Anna Gibson shows me around its Regency-styled rooms, she points out horsehair from the building’s original plasterwork and a fireplace in the family parlour, (now the museum café), in front of which the four youngest Brontë children were reportedly born.

I can’t wait to tell my friends about the upstairs en suite rooms – named, you guessed it, Charlotte, Emily and Anne – where guests can now stay. I sleep in Charlotte’s room, now furnished with a plush four poster bed draped in pink and gold Jacquard style bedding; a chaise longue and pictures of Charlotte and her father. It feels quite surreal to imagine that all six of the Brontë siblings once slept here. And it feels like an apt ending to a journey that proves the Brontës’ literacy legacy is still going strong, some 200 years on. (Lucy McGuire)

Underdog: The Other Other Brontë

The Rondo Theatre, Bath, BA1 6RT

Wednesday 25th March 2026 - Saturday 28th March 2026

Charlotte. Emily. Anne. Genius is relative.

The Victorian literary world is a boys' club, and the Brontë sisters must fight for their place at the table - and not just with the establishment. Buckle up: Charlotte has some confessions to make about why she has literary icon status, while Anne is remembered as the 'other' Brontë...

This wild, irreverent, funny play takes the literary legends off their pedestals and shows us three very real women: brilliant sisters who love fiercely but aren't above a bit of sibling rivalry as they strive for recognition and legacy.

Professor Aoife McLysaght, Irish geneticist and a professor in the Molecular Evolution Laboratory of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin

This is a VERY hard question, and the answer seems to change over time. I remember reading Black Beauty and Alice in Wonderland as a child and loving those so much that I asked my grandparents to get me more of the same. They had beautiful hardback covers with gold embossed decoration, and I decided that I needed more books that looked like that, presuming I would enjoy them just as much. They found books with matching covers but they were the significantly more advanced books Jane Eyre and Little Women – these were quite a bit of a step up for me at the time, but then Jane Eyre became my favourite book. (Adele Miner)