Emily Bronte

Ravishing, daring biopic of Emily Brontë: Emily reviewed

15 October 2022 9:00 am

The life of Emily Brontë is an enduring object of fascination. So small, the life, so sparse, so limited. Yet…

Thoughtful and impeccable: Ken Burns's Hemingway reviewed

3 July 2021 9:00 am

Ken Burns made his name in 1990 with The Civil War, the justly celebrated 11-and-a-half-hour documentary series that gave America’s…

From the archive: the Spectator’s original verdicts on literary classics

15 December 2018 9:00 am

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë,  reviewed 18 December 1847 An attempt to give novelty and interest to fiction, by resorting…

Romance and rejection

28 October 2017 9:00 am

‘Outsider’ ought to be an important word. To attach it to someone, particularly a writer, is to suggest that their…

Charlotte Brontë, as she appears in Branwell’s famous group portrait of his sisters (detail)

Charlotte Brontë: Cinderella or ugly sister?

24 October 2015 9:00 am

Preparations for next year’s bicentennial celebrations of the birth of Charlotte Brontë haven’t exactly got off to a flying start.…

Women go off the rails

18 April 2015 9:00 am

The Lost Child begins with a scene of 18th-century distress and dissolution down by the docks, as a woman —…

‘Lorna Doone’s bower’. An illustration from R.D. Blackmore’s ‘Romance of Exmoor’, 1869

A pork-pie and Capri-Sun fuelled hike around England’s moors

14 June 2014 8:00 am

‘No, no’ I said, when The Spectator’s literary editor rang up, ‘I’m sure you must be able to find someone…