BBC Radio uses f-word in new Wuthering Heights

Romantic figures Heathcliff and Cathy will both use the f-word in Radio 3’s version of one of literature’s most famous and tempestuous love stories.

Playwright and theatre director Jonathan Holloway defended using a number of swear words in his reworking of Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel for the BBC.

He told Radiotimes.com that the Yorkshire Moors story would have shocked its readers when it was originally published.

“For me Wuthering Heights is a story of violent obsession, and a tortuous unfulfilled relationship. This is not a Vaseline-lensed experience,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to elbow out – this idea that it’s the cosy greatest love story ever told – it’s not. The f-words are part of my attempt to shift the production to left field, and to help capture the shock that was associated with the original book when it was published.”

Andrew McCarthy, Director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Howarth, said early readers of the novel would have found the book “shocking”.

“Some words were crossed out in the original text because they were too strong,” he said.

ITV recently broadcast a version of the drama starring Tom Hardy as Heathcliff and Charlotte Riley as Cathy.