The influence of British colonialism on the Brontës and their work is examined in a new exhibition.

The Colonial Brontës focuses on the period of exploration, conquest and intercultural encounters of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

And it illustrates the extent to which the literary siblings were fascinated by colonial military campaigns and British missionary activity.

The exhibition – at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth – opens on Wednesday, February 4, and continues until January 1, 2027.

Professor Corinne Fowler, honorary professor of colonialism and heritage at the University of Leicester, is a co-curator of the event.

She says: "The Brontë children were avid readers and their literary imaginations were fired up by what they learned about British colonial activity in Africa and India.

"This exhibition reveals that the young Brontës fictionalised real-life colonial battles, British explorers, missionaries and Asante warriors. It identifies their source material and traces the influence of empire writing into their mature works, particularly Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights."

In 1826, Charlotte – then aged 10 – nine-year-old Branwell , Emily, eight, and Anne, six, invented their own colonies, collectively called the Glass Town Federation.

They used the imaginary world as a setting for stories, poems and plays.

Their 'kingdom' was inspired by the real-life Asante Empire in West Africa, an area regularly in the news of the day.

Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, says: "This exhibition shows how these young Yorkshire children interpreted world news, incorporating it into their play and later their adult writings. That they were able to look critically at global events gave them a world view that was ahead of its time."

And Rebecca Yorke, museum director, says: "We are delighted that Professor Fowler accepted our invitation to co-curate this exhibition with us. Academics and readers alike have long discussed the influence of colonial Britain on the Brontës’ lives and works, particularly in relation to the story of Heathcliff, and with a new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights about to be released it is a fitting time to explore the connections between what the Brontës read and wrote."

Exhibits include manuscripts created by the Brontës as children, items relating to race and Heathcliff’s ethnicity, reading materials – with handwritten notes and doodles – and matchbox-sized miniature books. (Alistair Shand)

A stunning nature reserve, whose landscape famously inspired the Brontë sisters, is being touted as a must-see for nature enthusiasts and wildlife lovers.

This pioneering nature reserve in West Yorkshire has been making waves after recently being named one of the wonders of the world to visit in 2026 by esteemed international travel magazine, Condé Nast Traveller.

The picturesque reserve was established in May 2025 as part of King Charles' initiative of 25 National Nature Reserves (NNRs), designed to conserve wildlife and celebrate UK landscapes by providing enhanced protection to the unique topography within these designated areas.

Covering 3,148 acres (1,274 hectares) - roughly double the size of Ilkley Moor - the reserve connects eight natural sites within the Bradford and South Pennines area, including the famous Penistone Country Park in Haworth, once home to the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne. (Parul Sharma)

I came to Brontë country fully signed up for the unfiltered Wuthering Heights experience: the tumult of windswept moors, storm-beaten farmhouses, haunting heroines, nature wild and untamed. I didn’t think it would turn its full fury against me.

I’ve been halted on a riverside track that leads to the stone farmhouse where I’m staying, set on a hillside in the Yorkshire Dales. [...]

I’m not sure how long it takes me to reach the house; all I remember is more barely passable breaches, clinging on to a mossy stone wall here, a rotten plank there, while the river gnashed at my legs. I couldn’t help but compare my state to Cathy’s after one of her outdoor misadventures — “as dismal as a drowned whelp” — but this wasn’t the immersive Wuthering Heights experience I had in mind.

To the south, a stretch of the Pennines in Lancashire and West Yorkshire has been a magnet for Brontë tourists since the 19th century. The sisters’ eternally alluring novels, their rootedness in this landscape, and the mythology surrounding Emily, Charlotte and Anne’s genius — Emily being the most enigmatic of all — have birthed what can feel like an open-air literary theme park.

Any connection to the family or their work, true or tenuous, will appear on a bus route, walking map or TikTok video. And each film adaptation attracts a new wave of Brontë pilgrims. The latest version of Wuthering Heights, directed by Emerald Fennell, lands on February 13 and Brontë country is bracing itself for the Insta-crowd, along with the notion of Cathy (Margot Robbie) in red latex and Charli XCX picking up Kate Bush’s hooded mantle on the soundtrack.

I started my tour at the latest attraction to open to the public, the Brontë Birthplace, part museum, part magical guesthouse. Nothing tenuous about this link: the three authors and their brother Branwell were born in the house in the village of Thornton, a few miles west of Bradford. Emily was barely a toddler when the family left in 1820 for the famous parsonage at Haworth, but it’s an ideal scene-setter for my pilgrimage.

Anna Gibson, the Brontë Birthplace general manager, tells me that when the eponymous non-profit society bought the terraced house in 2023, it had been “split into flats, shops, restaurants, all sorts” over the previous two centuries. For many years, a butcher’s shop had its sausage-making machine in front of the very hearth where the novelists are said to have been born.

Restored and opened last year, there are three bedrooms. I’m the lone guest on this January midweek night, so choose the largest, where Emily slept alongside her siblings — there were six children under the age of six in the house (not a typo, and none were twins). At a window, a small mahogany mirror marks the spot where their father Patrick is said to have shaved, looking onto Market Street below.

The fireplace, like most in the Birthplace, is original, but not the furnishings; most available Brontë furniture has been snapped up over the past century or so by the Brontë Society for the Haworth parsonage, now a museum. Instead, the dark wood pieces here are sourced locally, says Gibson, dated “1820 or a bit earlier, because they weren’t wealthy people and some of it would have been second-hand”. An exception to the faithful staging is my bed, a four-poster that’s closer to the luxury Charlotte might have afforded later in life, as the only sibling who survived long enough to enjoy her income.

Left alone, I can’t resist creeping around the house in the middle of the night, imagining the torch on my phone to be a chamberstick candle. The room I’d love to revisit in the dark is the maids’ quarters in the attic above the kitchen, with its low ceiling, narrow stone staircase, rocking chair and creepy nursery furniture. When Gibson showed me the attic room earlier, she told me a visiting YouTuber had opened a cupboard, only to feel like she was poked in the eye by an invisible hand.

But, alas, the room is only accessible in the daytime. I realise I’m being ridiculous: I only stepped off the train in Leeds a few hours ago and I’m already yearning to be haunted by my favourite Victorian novelist girl-crush.

Day breaks, and I have been ignored by any tiny Brontë ghosts. The Birthplace has a new café but doesn’t yet offer breakfast. Instead I walk a couple of minutes to Plenty at the Square, a wholesome vegetarian spot linked to a community arts hub where, in view of the incoming storm, a fellow diner and a waitress insist on giving me cardboard boxes to wedge under my tyres in case I get stuck (I will).

Past some of Thornton’s well-preserved narrow alleys, as well as 20th-century housing and a bypass, is a graveyard where the ruin of the Old Bell Chapel lies. This, along with an ivy-covered octagonal bell tower, is all that remains of the church where Patrick Brontë served as curate. It’s deliciously gloomy in the pale grey mist.

I’m in the mood for the stuff of the novel. The moors are calling.

It’s early January and daylight is limited, but there’s time for one of the shorter walks to Top Withins, a ruined farmhouse on the moors west of Haworth — a place long associated with the Earnshaw homestead that gives Emily’s only novel its title. From the village of Stanbury, it’s only a couple of kilometres, partly on a path that today would be better suited to crampons than to my trusty Merrell’s. After passing some empty stone houses, I reach Top Withins and look out at a panorama of desolation, frozen and starkly beautiful.

The craggy ruin is marked by a plaque that bears the tone of a purse-lipped postwar Brontë Society volunteer: yes, its “situation may have been in her mind” when Emily wrote Wuthering Heights but no, the building “bore no resemblance to the house she described”. Today, it’s a perfect match for the account Lockwood, the visiting southerner, recounts of his first approach to the house: “On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb”. There’s even a closet-sized room with two small holes for casement windows — impossible not to imagine Cathy’s “ice-cold hand”.

Over the afternoon I spot just a few walkers — all, unlike me, prepared with trekking poles — and hear only a “sleet-laden wind” and the call of grouse. On the way back, pheasants’ footprints have joined mine in the snow. Suddenly a dark slab of concrete sky is descending and urges me onwards to the house that for the rest of my stay will be my real-life “perfect misanthropist’s heaven” (as a naive Lockwood idealises the neighbourhood he’ll share with Heathcliff).

Like the location scouts for Fennell’s film, I’ve decided that to capture the isolation of Emily’s fictional farmhouse, today’s Brontë trail won’t do. I head north to Cowside, a late-17th-century stone farmhouse in the Langstrothdale valley, a little over an hour’s drive from Haworth. The surrounding land is still used for grazing, punctuated by field barns and drystone walls; Cowside still has its old piggery and henhouse.

The Landmark Trust, which restores historic buildings and opens them to guests, has returned the house to its form circa 1800. Inside, there are flagstone floors, mullioned windows, moulded ceiling beams — but also underfloor heating, soft linens and wood burners in the inglenook and stone fireplaces. Most transportive is a quote from Corinthians, uncovered during the restoration, painted in gothic script on the walls of the parlour: “Whether ye eat, or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

Even without a flash flood, reaching Cowside isn’t the easiest for a city-dwelling bookworm. After the riverside track — SUV recommended — there’s a climb of about 300 metres with all your wood and food for your stay (a wheelbarrow is provided).

But I am smitten, tending my fires, reading my books during wintry nights of true darkness and silence broken only by a nearby owl or creaking branches. This is the place to find yourself inside the spaces of Emily’s novel; to experience a “life of such complete exile from the world”, as the residents of Wuthering Heights do.

If Brontë country is a literary theme park, Haworth’s Brontë Parsonage Museum is its Magic Kingdom. This is where Emily lived from 1820 until her death in 1848; it’s where all the Brontës wrote their novels.

I tour the parsonage with Sam Harrison, its programme officer. The carefully preserved rooms are quiet, and other visitors — a tall couple dressed in formal black, a mother and daughter with an endearing shared enthusiasm — talk in hushed tones or not at all. The most important space is the dining room, housing the table where Emily, Anne, Branwell and Charlotte wrote, and around which they would promenade while sharing their work. The letter “E” is roughly engraved on its top, though no one can prove Emily is the culprit.

The most evocative piece of furniture is also here: the couch where Emily died, aged 30, three months after Branwell and six months before Anne. Some fans burst into tears upon seeing it, Harrison tells me. Opposite, the windows look directly onto the graveyard, through which each Brontë (except Anne, buried in Scarborough) was carried to the family vault under the church; their mother Maria had been first, when Emily was three, followed by the eldest siblings Maria and Elizabeth, 11 and 10. It would have been an even starker sight then, with no trees to soften the view, nor curtains. Patrick refused to install them, having held too many funerals of children who had died in house fires. Little wonder that Emily has young Catherine say, “I feel and see only death!”

In spite of the numerous biographies, we know little about Emily as a person, adding weight to the clues offered by each of her possessions. Almost all are the tools or product of creative discipline. She played the cabinet piano in Patrick’s study; there’s her portable rosewood writing desk with pens, nibs and blobs of sealing wax; her mahogany paintbox and geometry set; and minutely detailed sketches and paintings by all the siblings.

Their father was a published author of poetry, fiction and political prose, and kept a good stock of books. It all belies the myth, started by Charlotte, that Emily, having “no worldly wisdom”, wrote “from the impulses of nature”. The residents of this house were serious about art and literature.

And yet, all that mythmaking succeeded in bringing us here. Since it opened in 1928 people have visited from all over the world; at the entrance I count printed guides in a dozen languages. What would the Brontës make of all this? “They’d probably think we’re mad — ‘What are you doing putting our stockings on display?’ — but I like to think they’d be amused by it all,” says Harrison.

After paying respects at the Brontë chapel and vault inside the church, it’s a few steps to the open country. The parsonage really is right on the edge of the moor. Death on one side, untamed wilderness on the other. For Branwell, there was a third way: the Black Bull Inn, where, along with the apothecary where he procured his laudanum, the struggling Brontë brother fed his addictions. In the pub’s lunchtime din I find the mason’s chair said to be his, under a stained-glass window. Legend has it that when his family came looking for him, he’d escape through the kitchen.

A signposted route from the graveyard through Penistone Hill Country Park and across Haworth Moor leads to the Brontë Waterfall, which makes a sweet site together with the “Brontë chair” (a seat-shaped rock) and a rebuild of the diminutive Brontë Bridge (the original was swept away by a flash flood in 1989). On dry days, the falls can be underwhelming. On my second visit, after the snowmelt, it’s gushing. This circular route continues to Top Withins and Ponden Hall, a house associated with the fictional Thrushcross Grange (and now partly an Airbnb).

It must be said that the Brontë associations claimed for some sites are about as authentic as the pun-riddled merch on Haworth’s Main Street, from mugs to haunted dolls to droll “Never Mind the Brontës” pastiches (mimicking the cover of the Sex Pistols’ single “God Save the Queen”).

Yet fan fantasy is endemic to the Brontë business. Like Shakespeare, their universal themes are ripe for modern retelling, Emily’s scant biography bound to draw speculation, clashing claims, even tedious controversy. We might see Wuthering Heights’ adaptability tested to the limit next month. But everyone I meet, from Anna Gibson at the Brontë Birthplace to the cashier at the Parsonage Museum gift shop, shares a superfan’s excitement about the new film. (Maria Crawford)

When we meet in the run up to Christmas, the 28-year-old is making the most of her time off before embarking on a global press tour for Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell's sensationally anticipated interpretation of Emily Brontë's classic gothic novel about the destructive love affair between Catherine 'Cathy' Earnshaw (played by Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi).

Oliver plays Isabella Linton, the spoiled sister of Edgar Linton, whom Cathy marries. 'She’s a very repressed character who is desperate for love,' says Oliver, explaining Fennell's version of Isabella. 'Emerald’s interpretation of Isabella’s story is the reverse of Cathy's; there's an uncorseting of her. Like she becomes undone. There’s something so powerful about being underestimated.'

The role was given to Oliver early on via a text from Fennell, who she had previously worked with on Saltburn, in which Oliver played the blonde, chain-smoking Venetia Catton. 'She said, if you want Isabella, she's yours.' Fennell had Oliver in mind from the beginning. 'She is the most remarkable actor,' says the director over Zoom. 'We saw so many people for Saltburn, and Alison came in and was just so unbelievably real. Even the way she breathes is different.' A similar crew worked on the two films, which were both written and directed by Fennell.

'And yet a lot of people didn't recognise Alison,' Fennell laughs. 'She's so good that she disappears.'

Much like Saltburn, Wuthering Heights has been setting the internet alight, with claims of oversexualisation, historical inaccuracies and whitewashing (Heathcliff is described as 'dark skinned' in the book), all before its release. Fennell brings in her own idiosyncratic reimagining with music by Charli XCX and provocative scenes – the film reportedly opens with a public hanging in which a man ejaculates mid-execution.

'It’s how Emerald experienced the book when she read it as a teenager,' says Oliver. 'So it's not what's on the page, and I don't think that's what it's trying to be.' Does she think the film will make a Saltburn-style splash? 'You’ll never be bored by an Emerald Fennell film,' the actor replies, carefully. 'I think it will make noise, but you never know how things are going to be taken. I’ve learnt that it's not really my business to worry about that.' (Olivia Petter)

Brontë Country and Beyond

Photographs by Garett Wilde

Saturday 24th January–March 2026

Brontë Birthplace, Thornton

We are delighted to announce Garett Wilde as our next Artist in Residence at the Brontë Birthplace.

American-born photographer and Social Media Marketing Manager, Garett Wilde now lives locally in Haworth and draws deep inspiration from the landscapes, architecture, and atmosphere of the Brontë Country. His work captures the intimate details of the moorlands and historic built environment, shaped by a profound admiration for the Brontë Sisters and the folklore, and history of the region.

Garett’s photography is immersive and evocative, focusing on natural light across the four seasons to reveal the raw, magical qualities of the landscape he walks daily. His work invites viewers to slow down, observe closely, and experience Brontë Country through a contemplative lens — while also reflecting his passion for travel and exploration beyond the moors.

Brontë Country and Beyond forms part of our ongoing Artist in Residence programme, celebrating contemporary creatives whose work resonates with the spirit, landscape, and legacy of the Brontës.

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

5:30 PM  10:00 PM

Deets: The anticipated premiere of Wuthering Heights is rolling out the red carpet in LA.

A bold and original imagining of one of the greatest love stories of all time, Emerald Fennell’s “WUTHERING HEIGHTS” stars Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, whose forbidden passion for one another turns from romantic to intoxicating in an epic tale of lust, love and madness.

Who You May Spot: Jacob Elordi, Margot Robbie, Charlie XCX, and more

Hint for the Average Socialite: This event is invite only.

Wuthering Heights will premiere in London on February 5. Like most premieres in the capital, the movie’s stars are expected to walk the carpet from around 5.45pm. [...]

Wuthering Heights will have its London premiere in the heart of the capital’s cinema district, Leicester Square at the spot’s Odeon Luxe. [...]

The film’s stars including Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as well as Alison Oliver, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell, Charlotte Mellington are just some of the stars expected to walk the red carpet.

Director Emerald Fennell and pop icon Charli XCX who has worked on the film’s soundtrack is also set to attend. (Amber Peake)

Following Emerald's last sizzling film Saltburn, fans of the writer and director are awaiting a steamy take on Wuthering Heights, with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi leading the cast as star-crossed lovers Catherine and Heathcliff in the movie.

Alison shared insight into her role as Isabella Linton in the film, adding: 'She's a very repressed character who is desperate for love. 

'Emerald's interpretation of Isabella's story is the reverse of Cathy's; there's an uncorseting of her. Like she becomes undone. There's something so powerful about being underestimated.'

Alison added that she learned she'd got the role after Emerald sent her a text message, after she previously worked with The Crown star on Saltburn.

'She said, if you want Isabella, she's yours,' the star revealed.

In the wake of speculation that this version of Wuthering Heights will be racier than others, Alison said it will reflect Emerald's experience of reading the gothic book.

She revealed: 'It's how Emerald [Fennell] experienced the book when she read it as a teenager. So it's not what's on the page, and I don't think that's what it's trying to be.

'You'll never be bored by an Emerald Fennell film. I think it will make noise, but you never know how things are going to be taken. I've learned that it's not really my business to worry about that.' (Laura Fox)

Following this thinking, there obviously are other books that kind of fall into similar narration/plot styles like Northanger Abbey and Jane Eyre (cause Jane Eyre is just a Northanger Abbey 2.0). (The Austen Shelf)

In a recent cast interview with Fandango, the Barbie actor opened up about what it was like to work alongside Elordi. “I'm so codependent with people I work with, and I love everyone so much, and I'm always that person who's so devastated when a job's over and I never want it to end,” she said. “I think I developed that quite quickly with Jacob, too.”

Robbie then recalled the Saltburn actor’s behavior on set, noting how he was always around whether he needed to be or not.

“I don't know if Emerald told you to do this or you did this,” she told Elordi while referencing the film’s director, Emerald Fennell. “But I remember the first couple days on set, he would just be always in the vicinity where I was, but like in a corner, watching Cathy.”

“I didn't tell him to do that,” Fennell chimed in. “I actually had to ask him to leave.”

The Suicide Squad actor continued, explaining that she had gotten so used to Elordi being around, she began to look for him and was “unnerved” when she discovered he was not watching her.

“I felt quite lost, like a kid without their blanket or something,” she added.

Elordi agreed that he felt the same way about his co-star, calling it a “mutual obsession.”

“If you have the opportunity to share a film set with Margot Robbie, you're going to make sure you're within 5 to 10 meters at all times, watching how she drinks tea, how she eats her food ... She's just like an elite actor,” he said. (Brittany Miller)

Want to see it first, before the masses? We’re giving away two tickets to the exclusive, highly anticipated red carpet Irish premiere in Dublin on Tuesday, February 10. With a special post-screening after party, we can’t think of a better way to celebrate the upcoming Valentine’s Day weekend.

Sister Charlotte is only the second most noteworthy Charlotte linked to the house — and by coincidence, she was born in the same year that her more illustrious namesake visited Norton Conyers. Charlotte Brontë came to the house in 1839, and was — according to her friend Ellen Nussey — much impressed by the house in general, and in particular a dark tale that was part of the Graham family history.

'Like any good novelist, Brontë used her impressions of several houses to build up a picture of Thornfield, Mr Rochester's country seat in Jane Eyre,' Gervase Jackson-Stops wrote in Country Life in 1986, shortly after Sir James took over the the stewardship of the house. 'Yet Norton Conyers, which she visited in the summer of 1839, as governess to the then-tenants' grandchildren, contributed one of the most important ingredients in the book — the Graham family legend of a madwoman confined in the attics.'

The woman in question was referred to as 'Mad Mary', as Lady Graham herself explained in a 2003 article in Country Life. 'Who she was, whether servant or family, is not known,' Lady Graham wrote. 'Perhaps she was a servant who had children by "master" and who suffered from epilepsy or post-natal depression rather than madness.'

Although Brontë's connection to Norton Conyers was well known for many years, confirmation of the existence of the attic didn't come until part of the long refurbishment work undertaken by Sir James and Lady Graham removed some panelling to reveal a previously hidden staircase. Sir James — whose family have owned the house since the mid 17th century — asked for a hollow-sounding panel to be investigated, and his hunch proved correct: stairs up from the 'Peacock Room' to an attic room were uncovered.

There seems little doubt then Brontë based her timeless tale in large part on Norton Conyers. ‘We believe that the house inspired Thornfield Hall and the mad Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre,’ observes Lady Graham. (John Goodall)