Internet fulfilled my great expectations

Hasn’t the internet made research so much easier? When I was writing this book I knew Charles Dickens had been a regular guest at the Lion Hotel as he gave readings of A Christmas Carol in Shrewsbury. But I didn’t realise that his great, great grandson Gerald Dickens was continuing this tradition.

Thanks to local journalist Chris Eldon Lee’s knowledge and the internet I was able to track down Gerald who goes around the world giving readings of Dickens works and performing one-man shows.

He was very helpful with my research and also agreed to write the foreword to my book and to host the press launch in the hotel Ballroom on Friday, July 1 from 11.45-12.30.

Gerald writes in the foreword: “There is something very exciting about visiting a building where my great, great grandfather, Charles Dickens, stayed.  That experience is made even more special when there are well documented accounts of his visits. John Butterworth’s wonderful history of The Lion Hotel takes that pleasure to new level!

“John’s extensive local knowledge and passion for his subject is evident in every sentence, and as I read and re-read this amazing book I couldn’t help smiling. 

“Many of the stories have positively Dickensian overtones:  John Ashby, the man who built the current hotel, could be straight from a Dickens novel - a kind-hearted, generous and entrepreneurial host, secretly mired in crippling debt. 

“ The hilarious spat between The Eddowes Journal and the Shrewsbury Chronicle over Jenny Lind’s concert is straight from The Pickwick Papers, while the room at The Lion Hotel in which Dickens himself stayed could be taken from David Copperfield, with its ‘....windows bulging into the street as if they were the stern windows of a ship’.”  These windows (pictured below by Richard Bishop) can still be seen today.

For those who can’t make the press launch, and there are still places available if you contact me, there will be another chance to meet Gerald because he has agreed to host a Dickens weekend at The Lion from February 3-5, 2012, the nearest weekend to the 200^th anniversary of Dickens’ birth.  I will give more details about that in a future blog.

For more details about Gerald’s programme around the world click here.