Saturday 16 March 2013


I don't remember these stamps from a few years ago, which probably only goes to show how little real mail I receive - because how could I forget Paula Rego's Jane Eyre pictures?
I tracked them down in a Google search this afternoon after spending an hour with tea and a hot cross bun and a new ITV documentary The Brilliant Bronte Sisters (on later this month). Rego - whose Jane is downright ugly, not the prettyish-scrubbed-faced heroine of costume dramas - has no time for Mr Rochester who she thinks is a pompous twit.
The programme won't tell you anything you didn't know already about the famous sisters - there can't be anything left to say - but Sheila Hancock is an inspired choice as presenter. (Can she really be 80?) Without intruding details of her own life, it's clear that her response to the novels is heartfelt ... all that passion and loneliness and grief and, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, alcoholism and the effect it has on a family. Love her voice, too, when she's reading.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen those stamps at all, so much philately has passed me by.

I have never read any Bronte either, does that make me a philistine?

mary said...

Maybe they weren't around for very long, Toffeeapple, because I don't remember them either.
And of course it doesn't make you a philistine, but how did you get through school without encountering at least one Bronte! Do they simply not appeal? I admit that Wuthering Heights is best read when you're young and romantic enough to be swept off your feet by Heathcliff!

Cait O'Connor said...

I remember seeing that Sheila Hancock programme, she is amazing isn't she?

Noelle the dreamer said...

Thank you Mary for sharing the article on Sheila Hancock (80? Amazing!) Her husband has always been a favouriteof ours, particularly after 'Goodnight Mr. Tom'!

mary said...

I miss him in Morse, Noelle. And the new Endeavour series about the young Morse just isn't in the same league.

Anonymous said...

Mary, I was born and raised in South Wales, there must have been different set books at school. They don't appeal now, at all.