On Saturday 19 October, the BBC Newsnight and The Review Show presenter, Kirsty Wark, appeared at the Ilkley Literature Festival to discuss the crucial role landscape plays both in the Brontë novels, and in her own life, as well as in her debut novel The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle, set on the Isle of Arran.
Kirsty was in Ilkley for the Literary Festival, this year with a 'Women and Literature' theme. The Ilkley Festival event began with readings from young poets Mairenn Collins, Oliver Gibbs and Lizzi Hawkins, who had attended a residency at the Bronte Parsonage in collaboration with the Arvon Centre and created their own moving works.
Kirsty then outlined the importance of landscape to writers, and the crucial role it plays in supporting characterisation and creating mood, often in conjunction with weather conditions. Over 300 attendees heard that Kirsty had listed Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights amongst her favourite novels and that she had read it to her own children, when they were young.
The discussion covered scenes from Jane Eyre where landscape setting plays a crucial role, for instance when Rochester proposes in an Eden like orchard with a horse chestnut tree, as compared to the bleak moor, cold waterfall and rocky outcrops which were the setting for St John Rivers later, rejected, proposal. Another Brontë novel about a governess, Agnes Grey, drew attention for the importance of its landscape description, especially the heroine’s wintery journey through snow drifts to Horton Hall, which Kirsty read aloud to the audience.
Asked about the importance of landscape to herself personally, Kirsty described her special attachment to Scotland and to the Isle of Arran where she regularly holidayed, explaining that she had set her debut novel against a backdrop of topographically accurate locations. A lively question-and-answer session followed.