If you didn’t know much about Charles Dickens you certainly will over the next couple of months with the build-up to the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth in February 2012.
I must admit I have learnt a lot about the great author since researching his visits to The Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s.
Now there is the chance to find out more with the BBC leading the way.
Over Christmas on BBC One there is a bold adaptation of Great Expectations, featuring an array of talent including Ray Winstone, Gillian Anderson, David Suchet, pictured below, and Douglas Booth.
Then there is Dickens on the BBC, which includes the award-winning documentary strand Arena on BBC Four, which opens the door on the vast Dickens onscreen archive that has been generated over a century across the globe.
On BBC Two, Sue Perkins exposes the lesser-known reality of the Dickens family Christmas, looking at the marriage of Charles Dickens through the eyes of his wife, Catherine, in Mrs Dickens’s Family Christmas.
Also Armando Iannucci uses Dickens’s masterpiece David Copperfield to unpick the language and analyse the characters to explore the revolutionary development of Dickens as a storyteller.
George Entwistle, director of BBC Vision, said: “At the heart of our 2011 Christmas offering, we have a number of programmes inspired by the work and life of one of Britain’s greatest writers, Charles Dickens.
“From a bold adaptation of Great Expectations to a brilliant new comedy The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff, and high-quality documentaries from Armando Iannucci and Sue Perkins, we have something to keep every member of the family entertained over the festive period.”
And Dickens mania has already started. Even when I was watching Ian Hislop’s excellent programme the other week, When Bankers were Good, there was a reference to Dickens.
Apparently when Angela Burdett-Coutts inherited from her grandfather, the founder of Coutts Bank, the amount was so big that if it was laid out in crowns it would stretch for 113 miles.
She was very generous to charities including co-founding a home for fallen women - with Dickens.
If you want to switch off the TV and read a good book, there are plenty of new ones being published about the great man.
I read in a brochure sent to me by A Great Read that Claire Tomalin, author of the Whitbread Book of the Year Samuel Pepys, has written Charles Dickens A Life, pictured below, which is claimed to capture brilliantly the complex character of this great genius.
If after all this you still want to find out more about Dickens don’t forget that actor Gerald Dickens, the great, great grandson of Charles, will headline a weekend of celebrations in Shrewsbury’s famous coaching inn on Friday, February 3, Saturday, February 4 and Sunday, February 5, 2012.
He will perform two of his most popular one-man-shows about his great, great grandfather in The Ballroom of The Lion Hotel over the weekend, just two days before the great man’s big day.
For details, tickets and package deals please ring The Lion Hotel on 01743 353107 or email info@thelionhotelshrewsbury.com
There are Great Expectations of Dickens mania over the next couple of months.
Don’t say that you weren’t warned.
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