Dickens
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Nick Hornby on Prince and Dickens October 20, 2022
Most people will do a double-take on hearing the premise of your new book – it’s such a novel idea that Charles Dickens and Prince are from the same mould.Well, I didn’t worry too much about someone coming out with the same book just before mine.Have...
How Charles Dickens Made the Novel New March 18, 2022
Suppose Charles Dickens had died in 1850, at age 38—perhaps in a railway accident like the crash, in 1865, that killed 10 of his fellow passengers and left his nerves permanently frayed; or, more fantastically, from spontaneous combustion, as befell ...
The End of the Beginning March 07, 2022
"Hitler in Radio Talk Predicts Nazi Victory"—Boston Daily Globe "American Captives Starved by Nazis"—New York Times"Washington the City Is Overcrowded, Badly Housed, Expensive, Crime-Ridden, Intolerant"—Harper’sIn April of 1945, life-altering events ...
A Dickens of a Year March 07, 2022
This year marks the 210th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, the most famous English author not named Shakespeare. It is impossible to say how many biographies of the man have been published, but there have already been two full-scale works...
Dickens’s Multitudes September 27, 2021
Charles Dickens was a great coiner of words—over four hundred, according to the Oxford English Dictionary—but “monopolylogue” was not among them. Credit for that particular invention belongs to the English actor Charles Mathews (1776–1835), who devis...
The Dickensian Delights of Lockdown London June 11, 2021
I’m blessed by the fact that I live almost smack-bang in the middle of old London, a pebble’s toe punt from St Paul’s cathedral. Being an aficionado of Charles Dickens and J.B. Priestley, I’ve been able to wander along empty streets and alleys that h...
Dickens, The Writer Who Saw Lockdowns Everywhere January 04, 2021
In February of 1824, Charles Dickens watched in anguish as his father was arrested for debt and sent to the Marshalsea prison, just south of the Thames, in London. “I really believed at the time,” Dickens told his friend and biographer, John Forster,...
The Age of Cant December 11, 2020
Cant, or humbug, is far worse than hypocrisy: for if by hypocrisy, we mean a failure to live up to our professed moral ideals, most of us are hypocrites, and thank goodness for it. A society in which everyone lived up to his moral principles unswervi...
The Artful Dickens November 11, 2020
Charles Dickens was a mesmerist, illusionist and master of sleight of hand. In private he performed conjuring tricks, such as pouring dried fruit, eggs and flour into a top hat and pulling out a steaming Christmas pudding. In public, he performed sce...
The Genius of Charles Dickens October 23, 2020
Brexit Isn't a New Idea, Just Ask Dickens May 13, 2019
The chaos of politics, the searing divisions through society, the promised demise of faith in democracy: it might look like the country is in an unprecedented state of strife and upheaval over Brexit. But writers have been talking about this stuff fo...
Orphans of Dickens May 03, 2019
AFTER THE ELECTION of the forty-fifth president of the United States, something happened to fiction. Here I don't mean, thank goodness and for once, the concept of fiction, as opposed to or distinguished from fact. While newspapers benefited (mildly)...
The Crime That Shocked Dickens's London April 05, 2019
In the early hours of May 6, 1840, Lord William Russell was found dead in his bed at his London home, his throat so savagely cut that his head was almost severed.The murder and bungled robbery prompted a quote from the queen (“Too horrid!”) and gener...
