Happy Birthday to Our Mutual Friend

[faginsgirl]

Bill Lucey: Remembering Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens, on his 200th Birthday

Scrooge voted favorite character

Ebenezer Scrooge Tops 'Best Dickens Character' Poll

[Mark O]

Happy birthday Charles

Saw Ron Moody being interviewed after the service at Westminster Abbey, flowers were laid at Charles' tomb.

[faginsgirl]

[faginsgirl]

[billy farmer]

[jimw1]

Happy birthday Charles..........

[wellendcanons]

A very happy birthday in memory of a genius.

wec

[alan french]

Hi,
I know that some of my family were born in Somers Town in St. Pancras, London. Charles Dickens rented rooms there. (Mary Shelly was born there) My father once told me that somewhere not far away, as a schoolboy, he was allowed to see some documents or books which Charles Dickens had handwritten. He explained that he had to wear some special gloves and perhaps some other protective clothing when viewing them. I also gather Charles Dickens rented some rooms in Shoreditch, where some other ancestors of mine had connections. My family seems to have followed him around.

I have, like many others, visited Bleak House in Broadstairs, where Charles Dickens lived. There one could see some interesting memorabelia, associated with the author. Also, not-so-far-away, there is a house that appears in David Copperfield, also of interest.

I do know that since my last visit, there was a fire at Bleak House. I do not know what it is like now.

Alan French.

[ShirlGirl]

Miriam Margolyes...... "has just started a return Australian tour of her popular one-woman show Dickens' Women, part of worldwide celebrations marking the bicentenary of Dickens's birth. A self-confessed Dickens tragic from the time she read Oliver Twist at age 10, she developed the show with co-writer and director Sonia Fraser and launched it at the Edinburgh Festival in 1989. It features 23 female characters with biographical links to Dickens's life, and opens with the drunken midwife Mrs Gamp (possibly her favourite, she thinks: "she's got that mixture of evil and comedy that is particularly Dickensian"), and closes with the haunting figure of Miss Flite, the elderly eccentric from Bleak House; in between come Miss Havisham, Mrs Micawber and scores of others, all now old, cherished friends she talks to daily. "They are real to me."

Her passion for their creator is infectious. As a young Jewish child "outside the English class structure", as she puts it, she was subconsciously drawn to Fagin and the other rank outsiders and misfits of Oliver Twist; as an elderly, overweight gay woman, she still feels a keen affinity for the florid grotesques, orphans and eccentrics of Dickens's richly imagined worlds. She's drawn, too, to the larger-than-life, typically Georgian nature of his characters - "they had big, fat cheeks and jowls, they were portly, or rake-thin and witchlike. I find it easy to step into that world because I myself am a slightly excessive person. I'm too fat, I'm too noisy, I'm a little bit in excess in every department."

More here: Miriam Margolyes: the ultimate character actress for Dickens | The Australian

[torinfan]

Gee and I put my birthday wishes to Mr Dickens on the other birthday thread

[narabdela]

There's a decent Dickens Bicentennial exhibition on at the Museum of London at the moment. Well worth a visit.

Museum of London - Dickens & London

[alan french]

Hi,
Torinfan.
It is the thought that counts. I am sure Charles Dickens will not complain.

Narabdela.
Thankyou for the information.

Alan French.

[cassidy]

If Dickens was alive today
One thing we'd say I'm sure,
We love your stories very much,
Please sir, can we have some more.

cassidy.

[ShirlGirl]

Hi,
Torinfan.
It is the thought that counts. I am sure Charles Dickens will not complain.
Alan French.

So am I!