Programme of Events 2025-2026
The Brussels Brontë Group organises meetings and events in Brussels throughout the year, including an annual weekend of events around the date of Charlotte Brontë’s birthday (21 April). We organise occasional Guided walks around Brontë places in Brussels. Our Reading group specialises in 19th century literature (not just the Brontës!). Information below.
Registration essential for all events. To register, please email
Talks
Saturday 11 October 2025 (morning)
Université Saint-Louis, Rue du Marais 119, 1000 Brussels
10.00 Talk by Rowan Coleman, ‘Bella Ellis’, author of The Brontë Mysteries series
Like so many, Rowan Coleman fell in love with the lives and works of the Brontës while visiting the Parsonage Museum as a ten-year-old, back in the 1980s, and it was the sisters, particularly Charlotte, who influenced her desire to become a novelist. She is now the author of more than thirty internationally published and bestselling novels, including The Bronte Mysteries series, written under the pen name Bella Ellis.
In this talk, Rowan will speak about how she came up with the idea to fictionalise the lives of her beloved Brontës, but with a twist. Instead of recounting the traditional biographical details of their lives through fiction, Rowan decided to add another element. She imagined that before the Brontë sisters became world-renowned authors they were amateur detectives. There is no evidence that the sisters were amateur detectives, but as Rowan likes to say, there is no evidence that they were not, either.
The talk will take us from the moment when Rowan first got the idea and summoned the courage to go through with it and how she sought to develop authentic feeling in fictional versions of the Brontë family using source material. And also how she strove to recount known biographical and historical events accurately while weaving fictional narratives around the lives of the family. It will explore the challenges and unexpected discoveries while writing the series, its reception and possible adaptation for the screen.
Rowan is also keen to write a Brussels prequel to the series and will being using her visit to do some research!
11.30 Talk by Graham Watson on his book The Invention of Charlotte Brontë
The Invention of Charlotte Brontë (UK: The History Press, 2024; US: Pegasus, 2025) is the first biography of Charlotte Brontë or Elizabeth Gaskell to focus specifically on their six-year friendship and the construction and reception of Gaskell’s 1857 The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Ever since the controversies which greeted it, Gaskell’s work has retained a paradoxical influence on the shaping of biographical and cultural responses to the Brontës. It’s considered both a valuable source and is contested as unreliable hagiography. However, once we understand that many of the criticisms still levelled at Gaskell today originated as reactionary defences by those she criticised and that her admission of error was a false confession designed to save her publisher from a libel suit, we must consider the case against Gaskell as having always been biased.
Graham Watson will discuss his book, its reconstruction of Charlotte Brontë’s last five years and re-examination of Elizabeth Gaskell’s research into Charlotte’s life, and explore the documentary sources he used to challenge the prevailing perspectives of both women.
Graham Watson is a writer and editor. He studied English Language and Linguistics at the University of Glasgow and lives in Scotland. The Invention of Charlotte Brontë is his first book.
Christmas lunch and entertainment
Saturday 6 December 2025. This is a members-only event.
Presentations by members of the Brussels Brontë Group
Saturday 7 February 2026 (morning)
UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles, Rue du Marais 119, 1000 Brussels
10.00 Presentation by Paul Willocx: ‘Genies and genius: Middle Eastern influences on the works of the Brontës’
Ever since its first French translation in the early 18th century, the Middle Eastern story collection One Thousand and One Nights, more commonly though not very accurately known as Arabian Nights, has had a huge influence on European literature. Nearly all of ‘our’ 19th century authors would have read many of its stories and once you start looking for it, there are quite a lot of passing references to it in the books we read – though often to characters or stories less familiar to present day readers who may only know the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sindbad the Sailor. In the case of the Brontës, the influence of the Arabian Nights is most obvious in the juvenilia, where for instance the four siblings created four ‘genii’ to represent themselves in their shared fictional universe, but it still comes up repeatedly in the published novels as well.
Paul Willocx writes: I’ve always had a passion for literature, world history and foreign languages. At university I studied Arabic and Islamic Studies, which combined all of those things and was indeed fascinating, even if it didn’t offer the most obvious career prospects. I then got a job in a quite unrelated field and have done very little with it ever since – like so many humanities students. In 2021, I joined the Brussels Brontë Group to read and discuss the works of the Brontës and other English-language writers, not expecting there to be any link to my studies. But as I’ve learned since then, there are actually quite a few, so I hope I can shed some light on those for you while finally getting some use out of my degree
11.30 Presentation by Jones Hayden: ‘Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre?’
When we think about the Brontës and their novels, we think about passion, strong personalities and emotional struggles; maybe class differences, proto-feminism and the moors. But there is another aspect of the sisters’ works that doesn’t get its proper consideration: humour. Jones Hayden will take us on a quest to find the funny in the Brontës.
Jones Hayden is a political journalist who has lived in Brussels for 25 years. Passionate about literature, he is Secretary of the Brussels Brontë Group and leads its nineteenth-century reading groups.
Talks
Saturday 25 April 2026 (morning)
10.00 Talk by Irene Lofthouse: ‘Brontës, Boggarts & Brogues*: local voices and influences that helped shape the Brontës’
* (Boggarts are mythical creatures found across cultures, and Brogue is the Irish term for accent/dialect.)
The Brontë children were surrounded by storytellers from birth, hearing tales from different voices and areas. Their parents were from the North of Ireland and Cornwall, both places redolent with myths and legends. Genteel company in Thornton where the siblings were born would have contrasted with servants’ speech, which in turn would have been different to that in Haworth and Keighley. Dialect, myths and legends in each place were influenced by past migration and by new communities settling in the areas during the Brontës’ lives. In this talk, Irene looks at these influences, the accents and dialect the Brontës heard around them, and how these may have found their way into their written work.
Irene Lofthouse is a first-generation Yorkshirewoman of Irish heritage who’s been telling tales since childhood. She’s careered around many incarnations – caver, consultant, shoe-seller, storyteller, petrol-pumper, publisher amongst many others – but stories have been integral to them all. A cultural historian/researcher, writer and actor, Irene’s appeared on the stage, in a Ken Russell film, on TV, radio and at festivals performing her one-woman plays or giving talks. She’s particularly interested in making visible, invisible or forgotten lives and voices, in exploring new ways of seeing old stories and collaborating with literacy, historic agencies and universities to create accessible and fun learning resources. Co-founder of two community theatre groups, her poems and prose feature in many anthologies and she is a trustee of various associations including the J.B. Priestley Society. In Keighley, where she lives, Irene leads regular tours ‘In the footsteps of the Brontës’.
11.30 Presentation by Ann Dinsdale and Sharon Wright of their book Let Me In: the Brontës in Bricks and Mortar.
Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at Brontë Parsonage Museum, and Sharon Wright, author of biography of Maria Branwell and editor of Brontë Society Gazette, will present their book Let Me In: the Brontës in Bricks and Mortar, published in 2025.
Ann Dinsdale is Principal Curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and has worked at the Parsonage since 1989. She is the author of numerous books including At Home with the Brontes: The History of Haworth Parsonage & Its Occupants; In the Footsteps of the Brontes; and The Brontes at Haworth.
Sharon Wright is a British author, journalist and playwright. She was born in West Yorkshire and lives in London. She has worked as a writer, editor and columnist for leading national magazines and newspapers in the UK and US. She is the author of a history of the first women to fly, The Lost History of the Lady Aeronaut, and of Mother of the Brontës: The Life of Maria Branwell.
Ann and Sharon will talk about the new book co-written by them, Let Me In: The Brontës in Bricks and Mortar (2025), an account of their personal journey around Britain and Ireland, enjoying privileged access to private houses that shaped and inspired the Brontë sisters and their writing. The book combines the Brontë history of key houses with the afterlives of these buildings. It includes the untold secrets of the Brontë Parsonage and of the Brontës’ birthplace in Thornton, the ghosts and legends of the real Wuthering Heights, the legacy of Ulster and Cornwall in the sisters’ DNA, the restoration of the real Lowood School in Jane Eyre – and a Brontë pub crawl around the inns and taverns of Victorian England frequented by wayward brother Branwell.
Guided walk
Sunday 26 April 2026
10.00-11.30 (approximate finish time). Guided walk around Brontë places in Brussels in the Place Royale area. Fee: €10 per person, payable in advance. Free for members of the Brussels Brontë Group. To register, email
Summer lunch
The summer lunch will be on Saturday 13 June.
Reading group
Books on our list for 2025-2026
George Eliot: Middlemarch
Bram Stoker: Dracula
Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
William Makepeace Thackeray: The Luck of Barry Lyndon
Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
Jane Austen: Lady Susan, the Watsons, and Sanditon
Anthony Trollope: Doctor Thorne
Guided walks
We organise occasional guided walks around places in Brussels associated with the Brontës’ stay in the city in 1842-43. The walks, which are in the Place Royale area, take from one and a half to two hours and are usually on Sundays, starting at 10.00.
