Anne Lister: Celebration of Halifax landowner and diarist at Wadsworth Community Centre in Hebden Bridge for Independent Venue Week

Anne Lister: What Has She Ever Done For Calderdale?, organised by BGR Events, will take place on Saturday.

Lister, of Shibden Hall in Halifax, was a diarist, landowner, scholar and mountaineer.

Gentleman Jack, set in the 1830s and starring Suranne Jones as Lister, was based on her extensive diaries of around five million words, which were part-written in cryptic code and document all aspects of her public and private life, including her romantic relationships with women.

Dr Jill Liddington, whose 1998 book Female Fortune: The Anne Lister Diaries, 1833-36 has been cited as an inspiration for Wainwright’s show, will be speaking on Saturday alongside Rachel Lappin, a volunteer at Shibden Hall and Halifax Minster who works to promote Lister and Calderdale.

Dr Liddington’s book “got some nice reviews” when published, she says, but adds that at that time “there wasn't very much interest in Anne Lister apart from (me) being put in contact with Sally Wainwright in 2001. A mutual friend had given her, as a present, a copy of Female Fortune. She had moved away from Calderdale by then, and she was absolutely gripped by the Anne Lister story and we worked together – very hard – me answering her research questions, she pitching script proposals to television companies. But despite our enthusiasm and hard work and commitment, it didn't get anywhere.”

Years on, with shows such as Last Tango In Halifax and Happy Valley under her belt, Wainwright’s Gentleman Jack hit screens in 2019 and led to recognition of Lister around the world.

At the event on Saturday, Fiona Katie Widdop, known as The Yorkshire Harpist, will also perform music from Lister’s era as well as playing the song Gentleman Jack, written by O'Hooley and Tidow and heard on the BBC and HBO programme.

Lister wrote that on July 19, 1822, she and her Aunt Anne “at Carnarvon, Wales, listened to a Mr Roberts, who played the harp (and no other instrument), to them privately, and who played ‘Welsh airs, and Handel’s 2nd [Harp] Concerto”.

Fiona will therefore perform music for which the Roberts family were known too.

Independent Venue week is designed to celebrate music and arts spaces as well as the people that own, run and work in them, and Dr Liddington describes the community centre in Billy Lane as “incredibly valuable”.

For tickets (£12/£6 for students, under-18s and carers), call 07731 661053 or visit the WeGotTickets website. Doors open at 6.45pm and the event starts at 7.45pm.