 |
| Shibden Hall, home for a time to Anne Lister (bottom centre), "wife" of Ann Walker (top right), subject of Sally Wainwright's forthcoming series, Gentleman Jack, as played by Maxine Peake (in 2010) and Suranne Jones in the new series |
Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax, Scott and Bailey, To Walk Invisible, Unforgiven amongst many others) is currently preparing an 8-part mini-series about a Yorkshire heroine/anti-heroine/larger-than-life personality, Anne Lister. Anne is going to be played by Suranne Jones, having been played in a one-off film by Maxine Peake in the 2010 Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. The production should be broadcast on the BBC and on HBO during 2019. A family outing to Shibden Hall perched on a south-facing slope in Halfax’s happy valley revealed plenty and to spare about the remarkable Anne Lister.
 |
| Images of Anne Lister, Maxine Peake (top right) playing her in 2010, and Helena Whitbread (bottom left) whose careful work has helped decode the millions of words of Anne's secret diaries |
A woman ahead of her (and our) time
Determined to become an independent, commercially successful woman, the free-thinking Anne took on the testosterone-heavy might of Industrial England and, in many ways, triumphed. In surprising ways. Having had a passionate affair with a doctor’s daughter, Mariana Belcombe, (an affair that continued after Mariana’s marriage to a wealthy man, an affair that combusted during a weekend in Scarborough), Anne inherited Shibden Hall without the means for its upkeep or to fulfil her plans to enter the coal industry as a mine-owning entrepeneur. She was also lonely. So began a campaign to woo wealthy heiress Ann Walker. Unbelievably (but truthfully) they had their union blessed in a church and wore wedding rings. Despite the sneering of the gentry who nicknamed Anne Lister Gentleman Jack (the title of Sally Wainwright’s script), Anne and Ann were notorious celebrities and were invited to the unlikeliest of soirées.
 |
| Shibden Hall |
Anne’s ambitions to climb mountains and travel to Persia proved her undoing and she contracted a fever aged 49 in what is now modern day Georgia. The grieving Ann had Anne embalmed and took six months to transport the body back to Halfax – you can only imagine the trauma of that journey in the winter of 1840 to 1841. Ann Walker’s own story is just as astonishing as Anne Lister’s. What happened to both women and how we know as much as we do owes a great deal of thanks to a woman called Helena Whitbread who narrates some of the features of Anne’s life in a display at Shibden Hall. The hyperlinks in the first paragraph of this blog will reveal more. I’m looking forward to Gentleman Jack being broadcast but, in the meantime, a visit to Shibden Hall is to be recommended. And, to recover from your awestruck wonder at Anne’s life, call in to nearby Dove Cottage nurseries and hidden garden (open March to September.) Smell nature. Anne Lister, you are remembered. You were a marvel. A force of nature.
 |
| The hidden garden at Dove Cottage Nursery near Shibden Hall |
No comments:
Post a Comment