Game of Thrones producer takes on story of Yorkshire's '˜first modern lesbian'

FOR A literary figure forgotten for generations, Anne Lister's elevation to Bronte-like status is as hard to understand as the four million words she committed to paper.
A portrait of Anne ListerA portrait of Anne Lister
A portrait of Anne Lister

Celebrated as “the first modern lesbian” - though that was a word not in her extensive vocabulary - her story has been dramatised and documented on television no fewer than three times in 25 years.

Today, with the commissioning by America’s HBO, maker of Game of Thrones, of yet another adaptation, her celebrity went global.

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After a life whose details she had to cloak in secrecy, even writing in code to protect her privacy, it is an irony she would no doubt have enjoyed. And as if to underscore her place in Yorkshire’s literary pantheon, HBO announced that its eight-part life story of Miss Lister would be written by Sally Wainwright, the Huddersfield playwright responsible for last December’s BBC drama about the Bronte family.

Maxine Peake as Anne Lister in the 2010 BBC productionMaxine Peake as Anne Lister in the 2010 BBC production
Maxine Peake as Anne Lister in the 2010 BBC production

Miss Wainwright, who also wrote the series Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax, said her new subject was “a gift to a dramatist” and “one of the most exuberant, thrilling and brilliant women in British history”.

The series, titled Shibden Hall, after the 15th Century Halifax house Miss Lister and her family owned, will be filmed in Yorkshire next year by the BBC, which is co-producing it with HBO.

It bestows a degree of fame that Miss Lister, whose neighbours called her Gentleman Jack and whose lovers knew her as Fred, could scarcely have imagined.

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The four million-word diary she began recording on scraps of paper in 1806 is a remarkable social document of late Georgian and early Victorian Yorkshire, and of a love that dared not speak its name for a century to come.

Shibden Hall, HalifaxShibden Hall, Halifax
Shibden Hall, Halifax

Using an arcane combination of zodiac signs, punctuation and mathematical symbols, Miss Lister describes in erotic detail that would not be out of place à la mode in Fifty Shades of Grey, her love affairs and her methods of seduction.

From her privileged perspective as a landowner, mountaineer and traveller, she also includes her thoughts on social and national events.

Her code was deciphered after her death, at just 49, from a fever while travelling in Eastern Europe with a woman who in today’s terms would be her civil partner, by one of her relatives.

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Upon discovering the nature of its content, he was advised to burn it, but instead hid it behind a panel at Shibden Hall.

To Walk Invisible, Sally Wainwright's 2016 Bronte dramaTo Walk Invisible, Sally Wainwright's 2016 Bronte drama
To Walk Invisible, Sally Wainwright's 2016 Bronte drama

The diaries were finally resurrected in the 1980s by a researcher from Birmingham University and published as Anne Lister’s Secret Diary for 1817.

Miss Wainwright, whose drama will centre on the relationship between Miss Lister and her partner, Ann Walker, said: “It’s a beautifully rich, complicated, surprising love story.

“To bring Anne Lister to life on screen is the fulfilment of an ambition I’ve had for 20 years. Shibden Hall is a place I have known and loved since I was a child.”

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She acknowledged that the story had been produced by the BBC as recently as 2010, with the actress Maxine Peake cast as Miss Lister, but said previously: “I don’t think it really did her justice.”

Maxine Peake as Anne Lister in the 2010 BBC productionMaxine Peake as Anne Lister in the 2010 BBC production
Maxine Peake as Anne Lister in the 2010 BBC production

The BBC also produced A skirt Through History, a 1994 series with Julia Ford as Miss Lister, and a documentary, Revealing Anne Lister, presented by the Great British Bake Off’s host, Sue Perkins.

The new series helps to cement Yorkshire’s reputation as a production base for internationally-screened costume drama. ITV’s Victoria, which is now filming a second series featuring Diana Rigg, recreated Buckingham Palace inside the new Church Fenton Studios, a converted aircraft hangar near Selby.

To Walk Invisible, Miss Wainwright’s TV movie about the Brontes, which was screened over the new year holiday, was filmed in and around their original home in Haworth, and in York.

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