Gerald Charles Dickens | |
|---|---|
 Gerald Dickens during his one-man show of A Christmas Carol | |
| Born | 9 October 1963 Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouse(s) | Lucy Marsh (divorced) Liz Hayes (m. 2015) |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives |
|
Gerald Roderick Charles Dickens (born 9 October 1963) is an English actor and performer best known for his one-man shows based on the novels of his great-great-grandfather Charles Dickens. He was the President of the Dickens Fellowship from 2005 to 2007. [1]
Born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the fourth child and second son of David Kenneth Charles Dickens (1925–2005) and his wife Betty (1927–2010), Dickens is the grandson of Gerald Charles Dickens RN (after whom he was named) and the great-grandson of Henry Fielding Dickens KC; he is also the cousin of author Monica Dickens, biographer and writer Lucinda Hawksley, and actor Harry Lloyd. [2] Dickens attended Huntleys Secondary School for Boys in Royal Tunbridge Wells and West Kent College.
His acting career started with the youth drama group Design Theatre Workshop in his home town of Tunbridge Wells, with whom he learned the rudiments of stagecraft including improvisations and various exercises designed to develop ways of creating theatre.
Inspired to be an actor by a performance of Nicholas Nickleby by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Gerald Dickens first performed his solo version of A Christmas Carol in America in 1993, [3] returning annually to perform at historic hotels, libraries, theatres and Dickens festivals. In 2009, Dickens' American tour included such Christmas companies as Vaillancourt Folk Art [4] and Byers Choice [5] and has yielded national and local press. [6] [7]
Based on the readings performed by Charles Dickens himself during his own British and American tours, Gerald Dickens performs one-man theatrical adaptations of Great Expectations , Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol , [8] in the latter creating 26 characters in a performance described by The New York Times as "a once in a lifetime brush with literary history." [9] He also performs adaptations of short stories such as The Signal-Man and Doctor Marigold .
Dickens has recorded unabridged audiobooks of The Pickwick Papers [10] and Nicholas Nickleby . In December 2011 he appeared on the BBC's Songs of Praise . [11] A keen golfer, he wrote and performs the two-act play Top Hole!, based on four golfing stories by P. G. Wodehouse. In 2015, at the Music Box Theatre in Minneapolis, he played Charles Dickens in Jeffrey Hatcher's one-hander To Begin With, which was adapted from Dickens' The Life of Our Lord . [12] [13] [14] He played the role again in a 2017 revival. His book, Dickens and Staplehurst: A Biography of a Rail Crash, published in 2021, is concerned with the Staplehurst rail crash in which his famous ancestor was involved. [15] In December 2022 he appeared in Miriam's Dickensian Christmas on the UK's Channel 4 with Miriam Margolyes.
In 2004, Dickens won the British TV show The Weakest Link during its 8th season in an episode where the contestants all had famous ancestors. [16] [17]
Gerald Dickens lived in Goudhurst in Kent with his former wife Lucy Marsh, with whom he had a son, Cameron. He married his long-term partner Liz Hayes, a pianist who sometimes accompanies his performances, on 10 August 2015. They live in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
Ebenezer Scrooge is a fictional character and the protagonist of Charles Dickens's 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. Initially a cold-hearted miser who despises Christmas, his redemption by three spirits has become a defining tale of the Christmas holiday in the English-speaking world.
Simon Phillip Hugh Callow is an English actor. Known as a character actor on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including an Olivier Award and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for two BAFTA Awards. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to acting by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999.
Nicholas Nickleby, or The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, is the third novel by English author Charles Dickens, originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839. The character of Nickleby is a young man who must support his mother and sister after his father dies.
Jacob Marley is a fictional character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Marley has been dead for seven years, and was a former business partner of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, the novella's protagonist. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance of redemption to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits, in the hope that he will mend his ways; otherwise, he will be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own.
Edward Petherbridge is an English actor, writer and artist. Among his many roles, he portrayed Lord Peter Wimsey in the 1987 BBC television adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers' novels, and Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. At the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1980, he was a memorable Newman Noggs in the company's adaptation of Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
Ellen Lawless Ternan, also known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Wharton-Robinson, was an English actress known for her relationship with the older Charles Dickens.
The Staplehurst rail crash was a derailment at Staplehurst, Kent, on 9 June 1865 at 3:13 pm. The South Eastern Railway Folkestone to London boat train derailed while crossing a viaduct where a length of track had been removed during engineering works, killing ten passengers and injuring forty. In the Board of Trade report it was found that a man had been placed with a red flag 554 yards (507 m) away but the regulations required him to be 1,000 yards (910 m) away and the train had insufficient time to stop.
"The Signal-Man" is a horror mystery story by Charles Dickens, first published as part of the Mugby Junction collection in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round. The story is told from a fictional first-person perspective.
Indiana Repertory Theatre, frequently abbreviated IRT, is a professional regional theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana that began as a genuine repertory theatre with its casts performing in multiple shows at once. It has subsequently become a regional theatre and a member of the League of Resident Theatres. A standard season typically consists of nine or ten plays on two different stages and the bulk of its season performed on the OneAmerica Stage.
A Christmas Carol, the 1843 novella by Charles Dickens (1812–1870), is one of the English author's best-known works. It is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a greedy miser who hates Christmas but who is transformed into a caring, kindly person through the visitations of four ghosts. The classic work has been dramatised and adapted countless times for virtually every medium and performance genre, and new versions appear regularly.
Nicholas Nickleby is a 2002 British-American period comedy-drama film written and directed by Douglas McGrath. The screenplay is based on The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, which originally was published in serial form between March 1838 and September 1839. Charlie Hunnam stars in the title role alongside Nathan Lane, Jim Broadbent, Christopher Plummer, Jamie Bell, Anne Hathaway, Romola Garai, Alan Cumming, and Timothy Spall.
Staplehurst is a town and civil parish in the borough of Maidstone in Kent, England, 9 miles (14 km) south of the town of Maidstone and with a population of 5,947. The town lies on the route of a Roman road, which is now incorporated into the course of the A229. The name Staplehurst comes from the Old English 'stapol' meaning a 'post, pillar' and 'hyrst', as a 'wooded hill'; therefore, 'wooded-hill at a post', a possible reference to a boundary marker at the position of All Saints' church atop the hill along the road from Maidstone to Cranbrook. The parish includes the hamlet of Hawkenbury.
Cedric David Charles Dickens was an English author and businessman, a great-grandson of Charles Dickens and the steward of his literary legacy. He was a lifelong supporter of the Charles Dickens Museum in Holborn, London, and twice President of the Dickens Fellowship.
Lucinda Hawksley is an English biographer, author, lecturer, and travel writer.
The Invisible Woman is a 2013 British biographical drama film directed by Ralph Fiennes and starring Fiennes, Felicity Jones, Kristin Scott Thomas and Tom Hollander. Written by Abi Morgan, and based on the 1990 book of the same name by Claire Tomalin, the film is about the secret love affair between Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan, which lasted for thirteen years until his death in 1870. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on 31 August 2013, and was released in the United Kingdom on 7 February 2014. The film received a Best Costume Design nomination at the 86th Academy Awards.
Dickensian is a British drama television series that premiered on BBC One from 26 December 2015 to 21 February 2016. The 20-part series, created and co-written by Tony Jordan, brings characters from many Charles Dickens novels together in one Victorian London neighbourhood, as Inspector Bucket investigates the murder of Ebenezer Scrooge's partner Jacob Marley.
Frances Eleanor Jarman was an English actress who appeared in Ireland, Scotland, England, America and Canada. She is most known for her daughter's association with author Charles Dickens. Frances' daughter, actress Nelly Ternan, was financially supported by Dickens for most of her adult life, leading to suggestions that Nelly was Dickens' mistress. However, in 2021 author Cora Harrison suggested that Nelly Ternan was in fact Dickens' illegitimate daughter; a conclusion that historian Brian Ruck arrived at independently in 2022.
A Dickens fair is a weekend or multi-day gathering open to the public that attempts to recreate a Victorian English setting reminiscent of the novels of Charles Dickens. Events may be outdoor, indoor or a combination of the two. Many are Christmas-themed, a reflection of the enduring legacy of Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The fairs generally include costumed participants, musical and theatrical acts, art, handicrafts, food and drink for sale.
Samuel Weller, or, The Pickwickians is an 1837 comedy in three acts adapted from Dickens's novel The Pickwick Papers by William Thomas Moncrieff. It was first performed at the Royal Strand Theatre in London on 17 July 1837.
