WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Free spirit takes flight
PAUL FOLEY sees a life-affirming adaptation of the classic novel Jane Eyre
Equal: Michael Peavoy as Mr Rochester and Jessica Baglow as Jane Eyre
[Richrad Davenport] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
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Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
Jane Eyre
Octagon Theatre, Bolton
4*
“I AM no bird and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will” — thus Charlotte Bronte’s great heroine Jane Eyre declares defiantly as she rages against a world that not only enslaves women but denounces those who speak out in the name of equality.
It's little wonder that the novel caused such an uproar when first published in 1846, with one reviewer accusing Bronte of being nothing more than a Chartist sympathiser. Given the novelist's withering attack on “good” society, it was a label that she was probably proud to wear.
Bronte's story follows Jane’s life from a poor orphan cruelly treated by her aunt and her banishment to an oppressive religious boarding school. As a young woman she appears to find some happiness as a governess for the rather odd Mr Rochester’s ward.
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