The Rest Is History - The Book Club: Wuthering Heights

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Why does Emily Brontë's novel, Wuthering Heights, have such an enduring romantic association? Is Heathcliff a romantic lead, or an abusive antihero? Are the characters aspirational in any way, or irredeemable? Join Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Syrett as they discuss all this and more. Email us: ⁠[e-mail]⁠ Instagram: ⁠@bookclubpodhq⁠ TikTok: ⁠@thebookclubpodhq⁠ X: ⁠@bookclubpodhq⁠ YouTube: ⁠@TheBookClubPodHQ⁠ Senior Producer: Nicole Maslen Social Producer: Harry Balden Video Editor: James Clayden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everybody, it's Dominic here from The Rest is History and I'm here to tell you about a thrilling new show that we have been working on here at Gollhanger. It is called The Book Club and it is presented by me and me, Tabitha Siret. And it will be coming out every Tuesday and each week we delve into some of the greatest, the most fascinating, the most intriguing books of all time. And it'll alternate every week between something a bit older, more clobes. So, for instance, Wuthering Heights. And then something may be newer and a bit more contemporary. So the secret history by Donna Tart or never let me go by Kazu Ishaguru. And we will be digging into the kind of secret hidden stories behind the story. We'll be uncovering the truth about the author themselves. We'll be delving into the context, the history behind the book and also kind of unraveling the book

itself a bit for you. Yeah. So to explain the background to this, Tabby and I've been working together on the Restis History for three glorious years, Tubby. Feels like 30, but it's actually only been three. And we'd often be gnatering about books when we're off doing our Restus History tours and whatnot. And we decided that we would do a little bonus series for members of the Restis History Club, didn't we? So we did The Hobbit and in Cold Blood and the Handmaids Ted and so on and so forth.

And we were, I think the technical term, was blown away by the reaction to that from the club members. We were absolutely thrilled. Yeah, we were over the moon. And so we have spent the last couple of months putting together an exciting list of episodes for you. So we start with, of course, Wuthering Heights, the truth behind this iconic, famously kind of overwrought story and obviously reflecting a little bit on the new movie. Then we do Never Let Me Go by Kizu. And then what comes next, Dominic?

So we've got the Great Gatsby. We have Hamnet. We have 1984. So in two days' time, we're recording an episode of your favorite book, I think, of all time? No, Sarah J. Masses, a court of thorns and roses. Oh, come on. Don't pretend that wasn't your idea. So this is my first foray into the world of Romanticy. So basically, each week we're doing a different book.

And it's a little bit like the rest is history. We will be talking about the author and their lives and the social context when the book was written and so on. But also it's a little bit more personal, I suppose, because we're also talking about our own reactions to the books. We're having arguments about which characters we liked and which we didn't. You have a unique identity, don't you? Because you're simultaneously, ludicrously well read. Yeah. I mean, painfully well read.

But also, like, dreadful judgment. And I think that's a really unusual combination. And it creates, like, a fascinating tension within the show, because you are very poorly read and have bad takes. So the combination of those two things together creates just dynamite. It's amazing. So to remind you, it's out every Tuesday. So it's in the gap between Restis History episodes.

It's a different book each week. will advertise the books in advance as much as possible, won't we tabby, so people can read or not read as they see fit. Because basically the beauty of this show is if you've read the book, brilliant, you'll enjoy the conversation. If you haven't read the books and have no intention of reading them, that's great because we did the reading for you. So you'll appear incredibly well read when you go to dinner parties. There's no doubt you do being wrested history of people. So it's every Tuesday. It's the book club. And we've actually got a clip for you, haven't we? We do. As a massive treat, we have a clip for you from our first episode of the book club, Wuthering Heights.

So we hope you enjoy it. Weathering Heights by Emily Bronte, published in 1847. It's set in 1801, but it's looking back even before that. And Tabby, it's one of the absolute canonical classics. And it's actually regarded, isn't it, as one of the great romantic novels? It absolutely is. You know, for instance, in the very famous 1939 Lawrence Olivier film about it, they advertised it as the greatest love story of our time or of any time.

And as you say, I mean, it's an absolutely classic And it's particularly famous Because of its depictions of kind of wild moors Simmering tensions Unbridled emotions And of course, this very, very famous love story At the heart of it all Between Cathy, Catherine Earnshaw

And the kind of iconic, laconic, romantic hero Heathcliff And you, I mean, you've been going on about Weather and Heights for ages I remember even before we were doing the show. You saying it was one of your absolute favorite books. And am I not right in thinking that you used to read it? Oh, no. You used to read it every single year?

Yeah, but let me justify that. For 20 years. I want to explain myself. I basically read it first when I was about 12. And I thought it was just, you know, devastatingly romantic, heartbreaking. I loved the love story. I loved Catherine Earnshaw, the heroine of the book because I thought she was kind of fiery and beautiful and elegant. And then, as you say, I kind of put it on a pedestal.

And I would read it every year until I was about 17, like a sort of sad teenage miser. Yeah. I stopped after that for a long time. And so this was my first time rereading it since I was 17. And so I was very intrigued to see what I thought about it this time. And my view on it's definitely changed. But before we get into all that and before we get into what you think of it, I think we should give a brief outline of what Wuthering Hall is about.

It tells the story of these two families, the Earnshaws and the Linton's, and they live very near each other. across the Yorkshire Moors. And it's kind of about the tangled relationships between them. And these relationships particularly tangled in large parts, thanks to the machinations of, you know, the iconic Heathcliff. And the plot is driven by his kind of crusade of vengeance. And Heathcliff is a foundling taken in by the Earnshaws as a young boy

and is treated very badly by his stepbrother, but falls in love with, at a very young age, his step-sister, Catherine. There's something of the Greek tragedy to it, because it's kind of these cycles of revenge going round and round and round. So it falls into two halves, really. The first half is about, it's Kathy and Heathcliff, basically. Yeah. So Kathy Earnshaw, she ends up marrying this bloke with Edgar Linton.

The Linton's are the other family who live across the Moors. Yeah, much more gentrified. Like I think if you think this book is like Jane Austen and it's not, they are more akin to a Jane Austen family. Yeah. And so Catherine or Kathy, she's torn between slightly drippy husband, Edgar, and then, harsh. Much wilder, more violent Heathcliff, who is kind of her soulmate.

And then the second half of the book is about her daughter, who confusingly, would it have killed Emily Bronte to give her a different name? Yes, it clearly would, because she's also called Kathy. I think we could basically, just for the purposes of this. Old Kathy, Young Kathy. We can just call her Young Kathy, old Kathy. Yeah, exactly. So Young Kathy is living with Edgar, her father, in this civilised house called Thrush Cross Grange.

and then she ends up coming across Wuthering Heights and she's dragged back into Heathcliff's world and the sort of mad stuff that is going on there. For those people who haven't read it, and I'm guessing there's quite a few people listen to this who haven't read it. We won't give it all away right now, but basically there are going to be,

I mean, it's a book show, there's about to be spoilers. Yeah, absolutely. But just on the way it starts, it gives you a clue to how the book works, basically, because we began with that reading. We're being told this story by a guy called Mr. Lockwood. Mr Lockwood has rented Thruschcross Grange, so years after the events that are being described. And he's a Londoner, isn't he?

So he's kind of out of his depth on the malls of Yorkshire. And because of that, because of the fact that he is a Londoner and quite sort of civilised or whatever, he adds a bit of comedy to it because he kind of goes into this house. He goes to meet his landlord and his landlord is Heathcliff, who lives at Wuthering Heights across the Moors from Thrush, Cross Grange. And it's like he basically walks into an asylum and it's like shadows everywhere. He keeps tripping over dead rabbits. He's slobbered on by vast wolfhounds.

And he's utterly bemused by everything and everyone he encounters there. And there's this kind of grotesque cast of characters that he meets at the heights. Anyway, so he ends up getting snowed in for the night, much to his distress. And he is put to bed in this room. And he finds a ledge in the room covered with writing. And it's a name repeated in all kinds of characters, you know, large and small. And it says, Catherine Earnshaw here. And then it varies to Catherine.

Heathcliff and then again to Catherine Linton. And so he then starts to read this Catherine's diary. And this triggers the mad nightmare from the opening reading, which I think I injected with so much dramatic flair. Nice that you're complimenting yourself yet again. Again. Yeah. So basically it's a very, very violent scene.

The child's face looking through the window. And actually what he tries to do, Mr. Lockwood, is he tries to basically slit the child's wrist on some broken glass, which is, I mean, you would think, God, there's a lot of That's a bit much in a Victorian novel. But of course that sets the tone because there's a lot more of this kind of violence and abuse to come in the book. It's a very, very nightmareish scene

because it is a nightmare. It is. And it's very odd because Heathcliff comes into the room and he's so angry. There's like a mad desperation to him and it's like he has caught Lockwood dreaming the dream that he ought to be dreaming

about this girl, Catherine. And we at this stage don't know why. We don't understand the relationship between them. Yeah. So Lockwood has had this flipping weird experience staying in this hotel. I'm about to say this hotel. I mean, you'd never stay at it. It's like it makes faulty towers look there to Ritz.

Yeah, I'd actually rather stay at a hostel than that. Anyway, he's been staying at Heathcliff's house. It's full of all these mad people. There's a lot of stuff with broken glass and ghosts. And when he goes back to his own house, he finds out that the housekeeper there is called Nelly. Nellie Dean. Yeah, she used to work for the Earnshores at Wuthering Heights.

And she knows the whole story behind this because Lockwood is as lost as we are And so she says basically, well, I will tell you the story Yeah, it's not exactly the kind of recuperative No You know, pleasant tale that I think he was hoping for amidst his illness Exactly. So to cut a very long story and complicated story short,

there's these two characters, Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, who later becomes Catherine Linton, who is now dead. Yeah. And Heathcliff was the foundling and Kathy was his kind of adopted sister. Yeah. And they had this incredibly tortured and intense relationship.

She married this bloke Edgar Linton, who lived across the Moors. Heathcliff was driven sort of mad with rage. He ends up eloping with Edgar's sister, Isabella. Yeah. Who's massively fallen in love with him but soon realizes she's made a terrible mistake. Yeah, and that's kind of interesting because Isabella falls in love with him in the way that I think a lot of audiences now fall in love with Heathcliff without having read the book. It's the idea of him.

It's the byronic heroic idea of him. Exactly. She thinks he's incredibly glamorous. Yeah, and romantic. Little does she know. She has a child, irritatingly called Linton. It makes you hate Emily Bronte. Yeah, you could have thought of a different name here, but you just thought you'd use the surname again.

Brilliant. Meanwhile, Kathy's had a daughter with Edgar Linton, who she calls Kathy. Kathy. So, I mean, this is a huge part of the name. the story is the doubling of names. But it's deliberate, I think. Of course, it's completely deliberate. It's like the compulsive repetition.

It shows you that you're trapped in these dark webs of hatred and obligation and... Exactly. It goes on and on and on. It's like you're saying about the Greek chadderty thing. It's basically the idea of the bitterness and the hatred and the jealousy being passed down through the generations. Yeah.

It makes you think, though, given the violence of it and the, you know, how complicated it all it is, it makes you wonder, like, what is going on in the moment? mind from which it sprung, like the strange mystery of Emily Bronte. That's a very nice segue, Tabby, into talking about Emily Bronte, right? But first of all, I mean, should we talk about another fevered imaginative writer? What's your take on Wuthering Heights? So I read Jane Eyre a few years ago for the first time, loved it, and then I thought,

I'll read another Bronte. And I read Wuthering Heights. I thought, oh, disappointing. It's not as good as Jane Eyre. Because I didn't really get into the kind of fever dream side of things. I frankly did get a little bit lost. And I thought to myself, this is going to be very self-incriminating. I thought to myself, this is a bit of a book for teenage girls.

Oh, he went there. It's the book that a sad and lonely teenage girl would read every year, Tabby. No, but actually, I've changed my mind. Oh, wow. I will reveal all at the end of the episode, but I've completely changed my mind about it. That's exciting. Before we do that, let's get into Emily Bronte herself, because critics used to call her the Sphinx of the Moors, because she was such an enigma, such a riddle.

We know so little of her inner life. And so that, of course, plays into the Bronte industry and the Bronte legend because it's meant that obsessed readers can project onto Emily Bronte, you know, whatever they like. However, there is obviously clearly a historical person here behind the kind of layers of wild myth and legend. So, Tabby, you've done a bit of thinking, haven't you, into Emily Bronte's life? in large part because of that thing, the kind of the myth. I kind of wanted to see how much reality there was to it. So Emily, she's the fifth of six Bronte children.

And that she's born in Thornton in Bradford in July 1818. And then when she's, I think, almost two, they moved to a place called Hayworth in the Pennines. And her father, Patrick, as the local curate. And then she's struck by the first of these three kind of early tragedies that will dark in her early life because her mother Maria dies of cancer when Emily's about three.

And then she and her older sisters, including Charlotte Bronte of Jane Air fame, they're sent to this school for clergymen's daughters when she's not yet six and they're treated really, really badly. And this school is actually the inspiration for Lowood in Jane Eyre, the kind of terrible school where it all starts.

Yeah. And then while there, two of Emily's older sisters die. So before the age of seven, she loses two sisters and a mother. and then so there's only four children left and it's Charlotte, it's Emily, it's Bramwell, their only brother and then Anne who's also an author.

Anne's always a bit of an afterthought, isn't she? She is always... I always think that's a bit harsh though because I really like the tenant of Wildfell Hall. Right. But she, yeah, she's definitely not as famous or as impressive as the others, probably. Anyway, so they're educated at home

at the parsonage by their father and their aunt Elizabeth and definitely a bit of a weird household, I would say. Yeah, people think of them isolated and kind of... Yeah, in like this haunted ham. house cut off from the world, but that's actually rubbish. They were very literary. They subscribed to sort of heavyweight literary journals. The house is full of classics. And it's not

surprising because their father, Reverend Bronte, was a very impressive, very, very clever man. He came from County Down in Ireland and he was actually the son of a farmhand. And then because he was so intelligent, he managed to get himself to Cambridge to read theology. Although that said, he is a bit bonkers. Didn't he walk around with a gun all the time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, all loving fathers. He walked around with a loaded gun. And I actually think you can see the side effects of some of this madness in some of the odd characters of Wuthering Heights. He doesn't let them meet meat? Not because of, not for moral reasons, because he thinks it'll make them entitled and spoiled. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, so he's a fun guy. He's a good

time. And he's also very much kind of lets himself be an outsider in their community. He keeps his Irish accent, so he stands out. And he's known to be quite cold, quite distant. And he's known to have these mad kind of fiery rages. So he's a delightful fellow. Yeah, it sounds great. But I think it's no surprise in that his kids are quite odd too.

So for instance, a local woman told Elizabeth Gaskell when she was looking into the Brontes that the Bronte children had no friends in the village and I actually quite admire this because I think similarly, on one occasion they were invited to a party and they showed no knowledge of the games played

by their peers. And I actually quite respect that because my heart always sinks when I go to people's houses and they say, oh, should we play cards? Should you play Scrabble? So I'm on their side with that. You don't like cards or Scrabble? No.

I just think so forced. It's like the forced fun of it. Can we not just... Would you never play any form of game? Yeah, when I'm press-granged into it because you don't want to be... Well, all those people who were thinking about inviting you to their house to play Cludeau and now changing their minds. So because of this, because of their reluctance to sign up to annoying, boring, forced games, The siblings do become very, very close, unnaturally close perhaps.

They create these fantasy worlds, don't it? This is very you, actually. Is it Glass Town and Angrier? Yes. A place called Angria. Yeah. And the really funny thing about it is it's not quite kind of Lord of the Rings because they have little soldiers in them.

They have the Duke of Wellington in them. And actually it's very telling about how exposed these children actually were to the wider world, how much they didn't live under a rock in Yorkshire. because they're kind of set all over the world. It's in the Pacific, isn't it? The Pacific, yeah, exactly, exactly. So Emily, you know, they're obviously going to have to get a livelihood. Yeah, well, they have to earn some money, yeah.

Right. So she becomes a teacher in Halifax, and that's a shambles, isn't it? This is where me and Emily part ways, I think. She says to the kids at one point, I genuinely like prefer the dog to you. Yeah, and you will discover in due course why that's such a frightening sentiment and why these children were actually... Yeah, if there's any dogs, listen to this podcast, stop listening.

Anyway, so that doesn't work out. So when she's 24, she goes to Charlotte to a girl's boarding school in Brussels, and she teaches music there. But yet again, she absolutely hates it. She's very snobber. She's quite up herself. She says that, oh, I'll only teach the children at the end of the day when I'm done with my own studies.

And that's the only time that they have a break or free time. So she cuts into their free time and was unsurprisingly very unpopular. That's poor. She was also very unfashionable. She refused to wear the Belgian fashion. Would not wear the latest Belgian fashion? No. But what could a Belgian fashion possibly be?

Well, you wouldn't understand such things because you're not a fashionista like me. Do you know what Belgian fashions are? I do, actually. I just don't feel like sharing it right now. Okay, fine. Anyway, so because of this, and I find this so amusing, there was a student called Letitia Wheelwright, and she said of Emily Bronte,

I simply disliked her from the first. Her tallish, ungainly, ill-dressed figure, always answering our jokes with, I wish to be as God made me. She actually sounds like a terrible person. Yeah. The great critic Catherine Hughes, I was reading an article that she wrote about this book. And she described Emily Bronte as the patron saint of difficult women.

You're not going to be sat next to her to dinner party because she wouldn't go. She won't go out. But if by some terrible mischance. You're having a Bible reading or something. Her physical portrait can tell from that. She's very unfashionable. And she's also said to be tall and had big bones. Big bones.

Generally when people say you're big bones, they mean that... It's not a good thing. Yeah, in an unfattering way, right? And actually, there's a movie that they say. did called Emily with Emma McKay from sex education and they very, very much play into this. She comes across as almost autistic, I think. Right. And people said that about her, didn't they? Yeah, well, people have diagnosed her since with autism or with anorexia or all these kinds of things, which people love to do with characters in the past. I always think that's slightly dodgy.

I tell you one thing that's very dodgy, though, actually. So you mentioned the business about dogs. Yeah. As we'll discuss, Wethering Heights is a violent book. There is a lot of abuse of various kinds of physical, as well as mental. And you might say, well, where does this come from in this sort of quite withdrawn, lonely, you know, very bookish girl? And an answer is she herself is quite violent. So she had this dog called Keeper. And she loves Keeper, doesn't she?

But one day he climbs on her bed with muddy paws. And she reacts by punching him in the face. But not just once, but like again and again. And if you love dogs more than people, you're in big trouble if you're one of her students. I think we have to be slightly sympathetic towards Emily. You know, she's grown up with, as far as we can tell, a very angry father, and she's suffered a lot of loss at a young age, and she's very isolated. So I do have a little bit of pity towards her in that respect.

But the other thing that's worth remembering is that, you know, because people, they almost canonize Emily Bronte as kind of like a feminist icon, and we'll touch on that a bit more. You know, she has quite kind of high Tory politics, doesn't she? She would have set the dog on suffragettes away. whatever. Right. Which is not in keeping with the idea of how as this kind of free-spirited, sphinx of the Moors. So that was a clip from our very first episode of The Book Club from Wuthering Heights.

And we hope you enjoyed it. To hear more, search The Book Club wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Anthony Scaramucci here. As much as I love talking politics, and let's be honest, it sometimes gets me in trouble. My other and probably safer passion is books. We just dropped our 200th episode on my podcast, Open Book, another Goalhanger show. And to celebrate, we spoke with none other than Waterstones and Barnes & Noble CEO, James Thorn. Let's take a listen. It's a phenomenal piece of technology, James.

Everything has changed. Our phones have changed. Our computer. Maybe look at the TV. The book is a 500-year-old piece of technology. You think in 500 years it'll be with us, James? I think so. and I think it's astonishing simply how extraordinarily durable it is and effective it is.

And as you say, newspapers, we don't read them anymore. It's on your iPad. It's on your phone. Music, the format changes all the time. Not with books. And I think when publishers also concentrate on the physical attributes of a book as well, they are lovely things and treasures forever. There may be too many books being published right at this moment.

Do you believe that and tell us why? Far, far too many books and it's getting ever, ever worse. This is speaking as a bookseller who crafts a physical space, so I only have so much space, and there's more and more and lots of self-publishing. Nothing wrong with writing a book and wanting to see it out in the world, but for myself, I have to curate all the time. And the bit that I regret is that people get upset with me for not carrying their book. Well, I just can't. I don't have the space for it. And that's really what I mean. The fact that they sell on Kindle or they sell on Nook or online is fine by me. I want people reading. But I myself have to curate.

And the reality is that I can't take the vast majority of books that are published. I hope you enjoyed that clip. To hear more from James Dawn and others, subscribe to Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci wherever you get your podcast.