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Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Dan Snow & The Lost City: Like the foggy view, Dan Snow's trip to Machu Picchu is a damp squib
Dan Snow & The Lost City (Channel 5) The fabled Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in Peru is apparently the wettest place in South America. It certainly was on the day Dan Snow visited. Panting for breath, nearly 8,000ft up in the Andes, the historian and his camera crew found themselves engulfed by mists. Every time it looked as though we were going to get a glimpse of the jagged mountain landscapes, on Dan Snow & The Lost City, another layer of cloud swept in. Dan was forced during one deluge to take cover in a restored Inca house with a thatched roof. Rain was pouring off the straw, coming down in a curtain of water. It occured to me that Machu Picchu ought to be twinned with Britain's soggiest city, Cardiff. But, when I looked it up, the reality was even stranger — the Inca capital's twin town is Haworth in Yorkshire, home of the Brontë sisters. Well, they are both Wuthering Heights. Emily, Charlotte and Anne B all had a taste for the macabre, and would have enjoyed Dan's discovery of a 500-year-old Inca corpse, frozen in ice. The victim was a 13-year-old girl, a human sacrifice. Archaeologists believe she was raised in luxury, before being ritually killed with a blow to the head and her body placed on a mountaintop as a gift to the gods. The extreme cold preserved her hair, clothes and skin — 'literally frozen in time,' Dan pointed out. Helping museum curators to weigh her remains, checking that she was not decaying while on display under glass, Dan was first fascinated and then repulsed. 'That was one of the most intense experiences I've ever had,' he mused. 'I kept thinking, why would a family willingly give up the most precious thing in the world, one of their own children? It's just very difficult for us to understand today.' It's a poignant question, but one he did not attempt to answer. Instead of scratching his head, he could have sought out anthropologists to help us make sense of how human sacrifice was viewed by these ancient people. Was it an honour, or just one more of life's cruelties? The same lack of depth marred his visit to a local cook named Elena and her mother, both Inca descendants, where he tried the traditional cuisine. The women were wearing tall white stovepipe hats with black ribbons, but Dan didn't ask whether their Inca ancestors might have worn the same style. He did, however, inform us that his own wide-brimmed fedora was a tribute to Indiana Jones. Then he tucked into a bowl of freeze-dried potato soup, washed down with chicha beer made from maize (or, as we call it, sweetcorn). The potatoes looked like shrivelled chestnuts and the beer like a rancid milkshake. But how did it taste? Dan didn't think to tell us. We could have learned so much more. But, like the foggy view, this show wasn't nearly as spectacular as it could have been.
BBC News
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Brontë Country art trail marks Bradford City of Culture year
A new art trail has opened on the moors overlooking the village of Haworth, once home to the famous Brontë sisters, as part of Bradford's UK City of Culture Wild Uplands trail at Penistone Hill Country Park features a series of sculptures which will remain in place for the next five pieces, created by four international artists, were inspired by Bradford's landscape and heritage, including its wool industry and the Cottingley Fairies hoax, organisers Earnshaw, executive producer for Bradford 2025, said the trail was "unexpected" and "magical". "People who are not from Yorkshire think of Bradford as just the big industrial city, but two thirds of our district is farms, moorland and hills - and it is exquisite," Ms Earnshaw said. British environmental artist Steve Messam used natural materials from the local area to create one of the a 10ft (3m) tall structure overlooking the moors, is built from rocks and covered in the fleeces of 500 sheep from the surrounding Messam said: "The country park here is a disused quarry, so it is based on those slabs of stone which are left over."They are the building blocks of the city, and the fleece is literally the fleece that built Bradford. It is about those stories and narratives within the landscape." Meanwhile, Brazil-born and London-based artist Vanessa da Silva created another of the works, called Muamba Posy, which reflects Penistone Hill's changing da Silva explained: "I imagined it 300 million years ago when the climate was tropical and hot, and the plants were gigantic and lush."It is meaningful for me as well, because I do not come from England. I am an immigrant here and the history of Bradford - having different communities that live here alongside each other - it is really meaningful to be part of this."An immersive sound walk called Earth and Sky will accompany the sculptures and aims to provide music to match the atmosphere of the Yorkshire by Italian musician Caterina Barbieri and Opera North, it uses geolocation to match sounds to where visitors are standing, and will be available to access via a phone app. The art trail has opened just days after being targeted by vandals, who smashed two marble butterflies, part of an installation of dozens of similar butterflies were the work of Pakistani-born artist Meherunnisa Asad in collaboration with Peshawar-based atelier Studio Lél, known for reviving centuries-old stone-work were carved from pink marble sourced from Pakistan, and were inspired by Bradford's stories of migration and movement and the resilience of its natural have appealed for help finding four suspects in connection with the Earnshaw said: "Everything about this project has been a challenge. In some ways it is a crazy challenge even to have considered doing."We are out here on the moors; there is no power; there are no cabins to keep our crew safe and warm while they are installing things. But that is what is magical: putting something unexpected and joyous out here for five months."Wild Uplands is on display at Penistone Hill County Park until 12 October. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Telegraph
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Anita Rani interview: ‘I've always felt I'm on the outside looking in'
When Anita Rani was growing up in Bradford in the 1980s, a few miles from the village of Haworth, the Brontë sisters were ever-present. At her all-girls' primary school, a print of Branwell Brontë 's portrait of his sisters – the only group painting of them that exists – was on display. 'My teachers were very proud of wanting to educate young girls about the Brontës,' says Rani. 'We were spoon-fed the Brontës. Their story always felt personal to me, growing up in the same part of the world – but I wasn't expecting to want to get a Brontë tattoo by the end of this.' By 'this', Rani, 47, is referring to her Sky Arts documentary The Brontës by Anita Rani: Sisters of Disruption. The presenter's name in the title isn't by accident or vainglory – the film is partly biographical, exploring the parallels between Rani's upbringing and that of the Brontës, and her growing personal connection to her 'feminist heroes'. As a child, she would roam the same moors as the trio, and felt a shared sense of frustration, dislocation, yearning and, most pertinently, rage. 'People think of them as twee sisters, sitting around knitting and crocheting. But they were angry,' says Rani. The 'disruption' in the title isn't accidental, either – the siblings wanted to change the world around them; as does Rani. The film sees the Countryfile and Woman's Hour presenter returning to her West Yorkshire roots, visiting her parents' old textile factory in Bradford, reacquainting herself with the moors of her youth, and ticking off a few things from the Brontë superfan bucket list – including having a moment at the very window that (most probably) was the inspiration for Wuthering Heights' most famous scene. In conversations with a band of female academics, Rani explores everything from the 'whitewashing' of Heathcliff to Charlotte's crusade to reclaim the sisters' authorial identities, and how Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is helping women today who are escaping domestic violence. Throughout the film is the thread of Rani's own life. Speaking from her home in Hackney, London, she says that as a teenage Brontë fan, she didn't yet see the connection. 'I read Wuthering Heights and I loved it. I fancied Heathcliff. The mood, the tone, the gothic nature – as a moody, angsty teenage girl, living in that landscape, it just sat very comfortably with me. I didn't want to read about arranged marriages or finding Mr Right, I wanted wild women running across the moors, falling in love with men they weren't supposed to. And Jane Eyre. I really connected to this story of a woman who wanted to live her own life, be more independent.' Rani was born in 1977 in Bradford, to Bal and Lucky, Punjabi Indian immigrants who had had an arranged marriage and met for the first time at Heathrow airport. The pair started a clothes manufacturing business and poured their heart and soul into it, before losing it during the economic downturn of the 1990s. Until the business closed, Rani and her brother, Kuldeep, would spend every evening after school in the factory. Rani can see a parallel between her father and the Brontë patriarch, the Anglican minister Patrick Brontë, who himself saw the value of educating his daughters. 'My dad was four when he moved to Britain from India, so he's a real Yorkshireman. He and my mother wanted us to have the opportunities that they didn't, have adventures, live life. And education for a lot of migrant communities is the way to increase your social standing. Patrick didn't conform, he was more open-minded about young women. And I was always aware that my dad was different to other Indian dads, at least back then. He took me to the pub when I was 15, taught me to play pool. My mum was horrified: 'What will this girl turn into?' But I don't think I'd be working in TV if my dad hadn't done that. It's an important social skill.' Despite her forward-thinking parents, Rani still felt the 'big looming mass' of pressure that forced families to conform. 'Growing up as a South Asian woman, there was a lot of expectation put on me, a lot of conditioning to behave a certain way. I didn't want to do any of it. Very early on, I recognised that boys had it much easier than girls. And it was always the women who would treat the boys differently – women are often the flag-bearers for the patriarchy. There's an environment that tries to keep women in their place. I remember as a child wishing that I was a boy.' The Brontë sisters would sympathise. At a Rani family gathering, an aunt was singing the praises of a potential bride for one of the young men of the family. She was perfect, said the aunt, 'she didn't say anything'. Rani is the first woman in her family who did not have an arranged marriage, wedding Bhupinder Rehal in 2009. 'And I'm divorced now, so I am a complete pariah,' she jokes. A seismic moment in her life was her 2015 episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, in which she learnt the horrific fate of her female ancestors during the Partition of India. Many women in the Punjab 'chose' death, including Rani's grandfather's first wife, who threw herself down a well rather than let herself be 'taken' by Muslim soldiers. 'Something snapped inside me,' says Rani. 'It was a moment of realisation – I was the first woman of my lineage to have a choice and a voice. When I read about Partition, I realised that these women were not far from those I grew up with. Their lives, their lack of choice is what makes it important for me to share my story. To take ownership of the shame.' In the film, Rani is visibly moved when speaking to Professor Katy Mullin, an academic who works with a domestic-abuse charity in Bradford that uses The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to discuss coercive control with women who have left, or are looking to leave, abusive relationships. The protagonist, Helen Graham, has left her abusive husband and taken their son, and the novel scandalised and unnerved contemporary society. 'Anne was the quietest [of the sisters], but she was the one who knew why she was writing,' says Rani. 'She knew exactly why, and she wanted it to impact women.' While it is remarkable that a novel from 1848 can help women in desperate situations now, is it not depressing that the issues that the Brontës railed against are still as pertinent? 'It doesn't depress me,' says Rani, 'because I've known about it all my life. I felt delighted that these women existed 200 years ago, that they were talking about it, that they had this sense of urgency. I know the sort of drive within them that it would have taken to write these stories.' There is a sense with Sisters of Disruption that Rani is reconciling a side of her identity – the outdoors-loving, 'misfit' teenager who grew up in a British-Punjabi family and was the only Asian girl at her school. When she read Wuthering Heights, it 'never occurred' to Rani that Heathcliff was white. In the novel, the brooding outsider is described as a 'dark-skinned gipsy' and his provenance is still debated today. 'I just thought, 'Oh, OK, maybe he looks a bit like me.' And maybe that's another reason I connected with him.' As the documentary points out, screen adaptations have tended to 'whitewash' Heathcliff (Timothy Dalton, Ralph Fiennes and Tom Hardy are among the actors to have played him), with only Andrea Arnold's 2011 version featuring a black actor, James Howson. Emerald Fennell's upcoming adaptation caused a stir for appointing the pale-skinned Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, something only made more controversial by the comments of the film's casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, on the subject: 'It's just a book.' In 2023, Rani published her first novel, Baby Does a Runner, about a British-South Asian woman who leaves her life behind to discover her roots in India. Did she have the Brontës at her shoulder as she wrote? 'I wish. It's definitely a book where I am saying something, where I am joining the dots of my own life. I wanted to write about a character that I don't feel exists elsewhere, the flawed British-South Asian everywoman. I feel now that my next novel might channel a bit more of them.' Having battled against pigeonholing, Rani was delighted to break through another barrier to host this arts documentary. 'I've always tried to avoid being put in a box. I've had some brilliant projects, but there's always more. It'd be nice to get a little music-radio show.' Having revealed in the film her teenage love for the NME, perhaps a producer at 6 Music should give her a call? 'I'm a huge fan of 6 Music. So, who knows? I can just keep ploughing away. But at the same time, I let the universe bring it to me now, like it did with this film. Every different project I do changes people's perception a little bit.' And that tattoo? 'Yeah, I still think I'll get it.' What will it say? 'It might say, 'Sister of disruption'.'
The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Brontë sisters' Bradford birthplace opens for visitors
The refurbished house in Bradford where the Brontë sisters were born is now welcoming visitors, having been opened on Thursday by the queen. Nestled in a narrow street in the village of Thornton, the home where the literary dynasty spent the early years of their lives was officially opened by Queen Camilla during her visit to Bradford, this year's City of Culture, with King Charles. This follows 18 months of hard-fought campaigning and fundraising to purchase the historic building and transform it into a museum, educational centre and overnight accommodation. The modest house is where the Brontë sisters Charlotte, Anne and Emily were born and lived with their church minister father Patrick and their brother Branwell. The family, including their mother Maria and two older children, Maria and Elizabeth, moved to the now-famous parsonage in Haworth in April 1820, when Charlotte was four, Wuthering Heights author Emily, two, and Anne, who went on to write The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, just three months old. Maria died not long after the move, aged 38, and the two older sisters both died in 1825, aged 11 and 10. The building at 72-74 Market Street, Thornton, Grade II* listed since 1952, has had various uses since they left, including housing several butchers and most recently a cafe, which closed down during the Covid-19 pandemic. A team of campaigners including Bradford-born TV presenter Christa Ackroyd and Nigel West, a volunteer fundraiser who has family links to the Brontës, have worked tirelessly to first buy the building, which went on sale for £300,000, and then raise money to renovate it. Thanks to a £250,000 grant from the Bradford City of Culture fund and a huge crowdfunding appeal, they hit their £650,000 target. The house will now act as a museum and an educational centre for visiting school groups. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Almost a million visitors travel to Haworth every year, many of them for the Brontë links. The team behind the project is now hoping a good chunk of them will also visit Thornton, six miles away. From July the house's bedrooms will be open for overnight stays. The biggest has been called Charlotte's Room, dominated by a four-poster bed, but in reality it would have been where all six Brontë children slept, with Patrick and Maria next door in what is now known as Emily's Room. A third, named for Anne, is actually in a part of the building that was added to long after the family left. West said: 'This will be the only place in the world where you can sleep in the same room that the Brontës slept in. Downstairs, in what is now the cafe, they were born on the floor right in front of the fireplace.'
The Independent
13-05-2025
- The Independent
Brontë country named UK's newest nature reserve
A vast area exceeding 1,270 acres near Bradford, encompassing peat bogs, heaths, and wetlands, has been designated as the Bradford Pennine Gateway National Nature Reserve. This is West Yorkshire 's first national nature reserve and the seventh in the King's Series, an initiative to create 25 such reserves by 2027. The reserve, on land that inspired the Brontë sisters' novels, is aimed at improving nature access for the resident of Bradford, considered one of Britain's most nature-deprived urban areas. The designation protects vital habitats for carbon sequestration and biodiversity, supporting endangered species like adders, curlews, and golden plovers. The reserve will also serve as a site for field studies, research, and community engagement, particularly in light of Bradford's 2025 City of Culture status.
