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PAGE 18 Wednesday, July 4, 2018 Wednesday, July 4, 2018 PAGE 19 REMEMBER WHEN...? Read more about bygone @ telegraphandargus.co.uk Like us at facebook.com/telegraphandargus.co.uk REMEMBER WHEN...? LANDSCAPES WOVEN INTO THE FABRIC OF LITERATURE Yorkshire’s diverse landscapes have long held the power to influence writers, finds HELEN MEAD

ROM sweeping moorland to industrial cities and rugged coastlines, Yorkshire has inspired many great writers. WEAVING: Industrial Bradford inspired JB Priestley’s works F Authors such as Charlotte and Emily Bronte, JB Priestley, John Braine and have been stirred by the landscapes of their youth, which have served to influence their novels. Now a new book celebrates the lives and works of a selection of writers, authors and poets whose work draws upon the varied scenes that make up the region. Yorkshire Literary Landscapes also examines how the landscape can help to define storylines and characters. Countless books and articles have been written about landscape in the novels and poetry of the Bronte sisters, but, explains the book, “there is much more to the Brontes’ landscapes than that atmospheric blasted heath above ”. Charlotte Bronte’s 1849 novel Shirley, for instance, has as its background the Luddite uprisings that beset the Yorkshire textile industry. Published under the pseudonym Currer Bell, the GRIM: Industrial Shipley, which influenced John Braine, author of Room at the Top book is set around Birstall, with locations including the 17th-century Moor, for a picnic and a game of town of Dufton to Warnley to assume a Red House in , Hall, cricket and another, fateful, picnic at secure, but poorly paid, post in the Elizabethan Oakwell Hall – renamed Pikeley Scar. Borough Treasurer’s Department. Fieldhead by Bronte, and Gothic Determined to succeed, and ignoring Minister. “In Shirley, the (1929) finds the the warnings of a colleague, he Yorke family live in Red House, which ageing, discontented Jess Oakroyd pursues Susan Brown, daughter of the URBAN: A street scene, from the city that inspired Alan Bennett HAUNTING: The clifftop graveyard in Whitby inspired Dracula is renamed Briarmains. languishing in Bruddersford. local industrial magnate, with, as the “Landscape is integral to the Bronte In the literature and arts magazine Heaton Review, Priestley, who was tale progresses, disastrous sisters,” says the book, by York-based consequences. author Paul Chrystal. born in Manningham but lived much of his adult life in the South and “The 1959 film of the book, in He describes how, as a young woman, Midlands, describes his hometown as particular, clearly highlights and Charlotte went to work at Roe Head ‘ugly and forbidding, and yet within compares the bleak urban landscape of School in Mirfield, and when the wind the easiest reach…is some of the Dufton – fifties Thackley – with the blew, she reminisced about the blustery loveliest country in ’. promise offered by Warley,” writes conditions that typified the Haworth Chrystal. landscape. These sentiments were echoed three years later in Priestley’s influential Describing the Yorkshire landscapes Charlotte was not always travelogue , which and locations which coloured and complimentary about her beloved explores the Yorkshire landscape, influenced their writing and moors, Chrystal points out. Writing in rural and industrial. And in his characters, and which can still be her preface to sister Emily’s Wuthering introduction to the pictorial book The visited today, the book makes use of Heights, she wonders why tourists had Beauty of Britain, Priestley writes of archive images and examples of each an interest in the ‘wild moors of an area he loved – the Yorkshire Dales: author’s writing. northern England’. ‘For a variety of landscape these Dales Many of those featured in the book Bradford and its cityscape features cannot be matched… A day’s walk were born and lived in Yorkshire, prominently in much of JB Priestley’s among them will give you almost while others, such as Bram Stoker and work. everything fit to be seen on this earth’. JRR Tolkein visited and were inspired The play ,is set John Braine was born in a pokey by what they found. Abraham, or in the fictional town of Clecklewyke terraced house off Westgate in ‘Bram’ Stoker has provided us with (believed to be an amalgamation of Bradford and moved to Thackley when one of England’s famous and haunting Cleckheaton and Heckmondwike) and his father took a job at Esholt Sewage Yorkshire literary landscapes by the novel , in which Works. Thackley was next door to making Whitby the setting for his screenwriter Gregory Dawson grim, industrial Shipley, the sort of novel Dracula, published in 1897. Other reminisces about his youth in town that set the scene for his authors included in the book include Bruddersford (an amalgamation of successful novel Room at the Top about Barbara Taylor Bradford, Barry Hines, Bradford and ), harks an ambitious young man, Joe Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin. back to his upbringing. Lampton. l Yorkshire Literary Landscapes by We hear about a day out to the village Joe has moved from the dreary factory Paul Chrystal is published by WILD: Top Withens inspired Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte BRONTE VILLAGE: The graveyard at Haworth of Bulsden on the edge of Broadstone DestinWorld and costs £12.99. NEW: Yorkshire Literary Landscapes by Paul Chrystal