WILY, WINDY MOORS

Walking becomes a celebration of the Brontës’ writing and the landscapes that inspired them

‘I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading: it vexes me to choose another guide,” Emily Brontë declared . This trailblazing spirit led her to forge a unique path through literature. Here, she becomes a posthumous guide to Michael Stewart as he follows in her footsteps – and those of her sisters, brother, Branwell, and father, Patrick – in vividly chronicled walks that explore the geographical and emotional terrain of their writing.

Stewart travels across moors and meadows, up mountains and through cities and villages and along coastal paths. He also voyages into the inner lives of the Brontës, showing how place shaped their internal landscapes, how the wild fuelled their imagination.

He begins in the Brontë birthplace, Thornton, in west Yorkshire, where

Patrick spent his “happiest days” before the untimely death of his wife, Maria, and two eldest daughters. He also follows part of the Pennine Way to the ruin of Top Withens, thought to have inspired Wuthering Heights. He captures how for Emily “the moors were a place of awe and fascination. It was a land that was alive with a terrible destructive beauty”. It is a walking book, but it is also a social and literary history of the north of England, Stewart writes. He perceptively excavates the past, exploring how the Industrial Revolution took off in the region, “thanks to a combination of soft water, steep hills and cheap labour”. As well as fascinating historical context, he paints a vivid portrait of the present day, too, as he walks through landscapes both bleak and beautiful. He compellingly conjures the force of the winds, the earthy smell of peat bogs, the haunting call of the curlew, the sound of skylarks.

The book will send the reader back to the Brontës’ brilliant books, and will inspire us to roam the wily, windy wildernesses captured so hauntingly in their work.