Anne Brontë died tragically young, aged just 29 (whatever it may say on her Scarborough tombstone), but the last week has marked the anniversary of the death of a man who could only have dreamt of reaching such an age. Thomas Chatterton, as we shall see, has a Brontë connection, he was a great poet, a great dreamer, he cheated the experts of his day but he couldn’t cheat fate, and he died on 24th August 1770 – he was just 17 years old.
