Well, That Was Quite A Birthday! Part 4: Happy Birthday to the Immortal Mr Dickens

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Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens Statue, Portsmouth, The Charles Dickens Museum, The Union Jack Club, Waterloo Station

And so my week of celebrating came to an end as Monday 7th February dawned – 210 years since Elizabeth Dickens gave birth to her second child Charles. It is sometimes reported that Elizabeth and her husband John had been dancing at a party the night before the birth, thus imbuing the infant with a love of entertainment and fun.

My birthday celebrations would involve driving to London to be present at a dinner to honour the event, hosted by the Central Branch of The Dickens Fellowship. My brother Ian, who is currently The President of The Fellowship had a busier day in store, as he travelled from his home on The Isle of Wight, and attended celebration events in Portsmouth, the city of Charles’ birth. Firstly a visit to the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum and then onto the UK’s only statue of the great man where a garland of red geraniums were placed over his head (Charles’s not Ian’s!).

My journey to London began after I had taken my daughter to her dance class, and as I was getting on the road straight away I was the best dressed dad there, looking rather like James Bond in my dinner jacket and hand-tied bow tie (no clip-ons here!). The traffic to London was light and I had booked a parking space ahead of time, so I would not have to trawl around the city centre, panicking that I would be late for the dinner. As it happened I arrived almost an hour before the reception was due to start, so I simply sat in my car and read for a while, until it was time to make the short walk through the Waterloo district of London, to The Union Jack Club where the dinner was to be held. The main road in the area is Waterloo Road which is a busy, bustling thoroughfare filled with buses, taxis and bikes. Pedestrians take their lives in their hands as they dash across the road to reach the huge Waterloo railway terminus, rather risking being struck by a car than missing that all important train home. But running parallel to Waterloo Road is Cromwell Road and that is quiet and peaceful street, lined with a terrace of elegant Victorian houses, now much sought after and no doubt eye-wateringly expensive, but presumably built as mass housing for manual labourers, maybe those who built Waterloo Station. It is a lovely part of London, and surprisingly very peaceful and it was along Cromwell Road that I walked from my car to the club.

The Union Jack Club has no Dickens connections, but exists for the use of servicemen and veterans. It was first built on the site in 1907, but was heavily bombed during the Second World War, and eventually (in 1975) a new building was erected on the same spot.

The Fellowship dinner was being held in small dining room, and we had 46 attendees. Paul Graham, the Hon Gen Sec of the Fellowship had not been sure how many members would actually attend this first meeting since lockdown restrictions were eased, but it was a goodly crowd who gathered. Ian, in his role as President was hosting the event, and it was lovely to hug him and his wife Anne when I arrived.

There were many old friends and familiar faces in the room and we all chatted until Ian called the evening to order and recited the traditional Dickens Grace:

‘In Fellowship assembled here; We thank thee Lord for food and cheer; And through our saviour, thy dear son; We pray ‘God Bless Us, Every One!’ We all joined in the last line and then took our seats to dine and converse.

Many of the guests had watched my streamed performance the night before, and were kind enough to compliment me on it. Cindy Sughrue, from the museum, was also there and told me that the feedback from the event had been very positive, which was immensely pleasing.

Ian, Anne and I shared our table with Adrian Wooton OBE, the Chief Executive of Film London and The British Film Commission. Adrian became involved with the Fellowship in 2012, when we celebrated the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth, by curating a series of events based on Dickens in Film and has been an active member ever since, he was due to speak at the end of the dinner, and was a marvellous companion. Ian and I in particularly relishing a shared love of Formula One motor racing!

Dinner was delicious, consisting of a smoked salmon and horseradish starter, a steak with mashed potatoes and broccoli for main , and a crème brule for desert. At one point, when the steak was served, Michael Eaton, another table mate, was spooning mustard onto his plate. Unable to shift the thick yellow paste he knocked the little silver spoon against the china plate sending a ringing retort throughout the room, which was immediately followed by a pushing back of chairs and a silence descending, for everyone thought it was time for the speeches!

Ian hosted the dinner with such grace and ease, moving everything along, and speaking effortlessly whenever he needed to. When desert had been cleared and coffee cups filled he announced a 5 minute comfort break and when all were gathered once more it was time for me to do my party piece. At such events it is the job of The President to introduce the speakers, and this usually involves quite a bit of research to create factual and witty remarks to welcome the guest. On this occasion Ian just had to talk about his baby brother, and did so with such a sense of pride that I got rather emotional.

I had decided to speak about my own personal milestones in my relationship with Charles Dickens, and spoke about becoming aware of his importance to our family at the age of 6 when I shared a pew with the Queen Mother in Westminster Abbey. I recalled being made to study Oliver Twist at school (quoting Roald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’ along the way), and I recounted the story of my first ever performance of A Christmas Carol in 1993, and how Dickens’ brilliant descriptive text helped me morph into the characters. I finished by telling the story of visiting the site of The Staplehurst Rail Crash and sinking up to my neck in muddy water. When the bemused farmer saw this bedraggled man trespassing in his field, and listened as I explained that I had been visiting the site of the rail crash, instead of taking a pitchfork to me he said simply ‘Charles Dickens’. I wound up my talk by saying that ‘he didn’t know I was there to research a book.  He just knew of the celebrity who had been at that exact spot 154 years before.  And that says everything about the long shadow that Charles Dickens has cast across our globe – much longer and more influential than just 21,307 days of life.  He left a legacy that can never be measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, or years.  Charles Dickens’ influence over our society is timeless.’

I invited the guests to stand, charge their glasses and I proposed the toast to the immortal memory of Charles Dickens.

It seemed to be well received, and there was some nice applause as I sat down. The truth is that I really feel uncomfortable giving speeches, it is not where I am happy, and I feel exposed and vulnerable. Give me some voices and contorted facial expressions to hide behind and I am relaxed as anything, but put Gerald Dickens in a dinner jacket and ask him to stand and talk…..

I was relieved when I was finished, and envious as I listened to the naturalness with which Ian and Adrian spoke, but it was a great fun evening and it was wonderful to meet so many old friends.

In closing this quartet of birthday blogs I would like to point out a remarkable coincidence: Charles Dickens died when he was 58 years old, in fact he lived for 21,307 days (hence the reference to that number in my speech). On Tuesday 8 February, (the day after I spoke in London), I was also 21,307 days old.

It was a wonderful week and I will conclude by once again offering a birthday wish up to Charles Dickens, and to thank him for making my professional life so unbelievably exciting.

Well, That Was Quite A Birthday! Part 3: A Home From Home

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A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Mr Dickens is Coming!, Mr Micawber, The Charles Dickens Museum, The Pickwick Papers

My week celebrating the 210th birthday of Charles Dickens continued on Sunday 6th February in two homes – his and mine.

On Sunday evening a specially filmed version of my old show Mr Dickens is Coming was due to be streamed by The Charles Dickens Museum, which is based at 48 Doughty Street, the home that a young Charles moved into having enjoyed instant success with The Pickwick Papers.

Cindy Sughrue, the director of the museum, had approached me last year with the idea of my developing a version of the show that would utilise many of the rooms in the museum, meaning that I would have a wonderful backdrop for my performance whilst the museum could be shown in its best light. The original idea had been to film it before Christmas, but various issues with my tour, obtaining visas and some family concerns at the time meant that we decided to delay the project until early in the year, using the birthday as a suitable time to screen.

Monday 17th January was selected as a filming day, with the 18th being held as an extra. The advantage of these particular days being that the museum is closed on a Monday and Tuesday, thereby giving us full rein to use whichever rooms we needed, whenever we wanted without disturbing the paying public.

I arrived at around 10.30am, and was met by Jordan Evans who is the Marketing and Events manager at the House who was responsible for co-ordinating the entire project. We would be working with videographer Alex Hyndman who has filmed in the museum often, most particularly with actor Dominic Gerard who performs his brilliant A Christmas Carol from the house in December, and as I arrived Alex was setting up cameras and lights in readiness for the first takes.

I quickly changed into costume, which included one of my oldest waistcoats – a black one with shining golden embellishments, and bright patches of colour. I saw it back in the 1990’s hanging on a bargain rail outside a charity shop in the pouring rain. I had been looking for a garish waistcoat for the show, and this one seemed to be calling out to me: ‘buy me! buy me!’ And I did.

I had re-written my old script whilst taking the virtual tour of the museum, which is available on the Carles Dickens Museum website, and had tried to feature each room in a way appropriate to the part of the story I was telling. My opening shot would see me striding down the centre of Doughty Street towards the camera and then entering the famous red door to begin, and this, Jordan decided, would be the first scene to film. The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray, as Rabbie Burns wrote, and on the morning of filming we discovered that it was bin collection day, so the elegant street was lined with piles of rubbish and recycling rendering our idea for the long view of Doughty Street impossible to capture. The three of us stood in the street pondering our next move and I realised that I was holding my hand up to shade my eyes against the low-in-the-sky sun shining along the street (which apparently runs East-West). ‘Guys,’ I said, ‘why don’t we use my shadow on the pavement?’ and so the show opens with a panning shot of a top-hatted shadow striding along, until the camera pans up to show me walking up to the door.

For the rest of the day we moved from room to room, planning how to shoot each scene and taking care not to touch the historic furniture and artefacts as we did. In the nursery on the top floor I performed the passage about John Dickens next to his bust, and then Alex was able to swing the camera round as I walked behind the original prison bars from The Marshalsea Prison, where the family had been sent for debt. At the end of the scene I moved out of shot, revealing a picture of Mr Micawber on the wall behind me.

We managed to get the whole show filmed in the single day, wrapping with a final shot in the little courtyard garden, and I drove home again, leaving Alex to cast his editing magic wand over the whole thing.

During the intervening weeks Jordan made sure that social media was covered with information about the screening, and Alex had made a short trailer for the film too, which meant by the 6 February we had a goodly number of viewers signed up. I would be watching the film, and then taking questions afterwards, from our new garden office, which we have yet to paint, so it would look rather as if I were sitting in a sauna. During the afternoon, after I had driven back from Sharnbrook, I went up into our loft and grabbed a large picture of Charles Dickens as a young man, one of Henry Fielding Dickens, my great grandfather, and one of me on stage, and hung them in such a way as if to suggest I was in a picture-lined study (I am sure that I didn’t fool anyone!).

I was scared watching, for I knew that many viewers would have highly academic backgrounds, and Mr Dickens is Coming was never written with that in mind: it was always a light-hearted script designed to entertain primarily and doesn’t really bear serious analysis, but Alex had done a great job with the editing, and it came across pretty well, I thought. We had viewers from Australia, Japan, America, Georgia, Malta and many other countries, such is the international influence of Charles Dickens.

When the final shot in the garden faded to black, Cindy Sughrue’s camera flicked into life, which was my cue to switch mine on as well. The comments in the chat room scrolled quickly as various viewers from around the globe congratulated me and asked many questions, which Cindy put to me to answer on screen. We spent around 30 minutes chatting until Cindy would the session up, and having said farewell, I logged off, leaving Charles Dickens’ home behind me and walked back down the dark garden towards the warm, welcoming glow of my own house.

Well, That Was Quite A Birthday! Part 2: Sharnbrook Mill Theatre

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Artemis, Dickens and Staplehurst. A Biogrpahy of a Rail Crash, Great Expectations, P&O Cruises, Stress Dreams, The Sharnbrook Mill Theatre

Sharnbrook Mill Theatre. Saturday 5 February

The next event in my busy week of Charles Dickens birthday celebrations saw me back to being the centre of attention as I was due to perform Great Expectations at The Sharnbrook Mill Theatre in Bedfordshire.

I had visited the theatre for the first time in 2020, when we were extremely fortunate to be able to present A Christmas Carol to a small, mask-wearing audience, widely distanced throughout the auditorium. It had been a wonderful experience and at the time wrote that I couldn’t wait to return, and now I was able to fulfil that ambition.

I was due to perform Great Expectations and for some unknown reason I had got myself into a right old state about it. Great Ex is one of my newer shows, so the lines are not as deeply ingrained as others, but I have been doing it for a few years now, so there should be no reason for me to struggle with it, but struggle I did! For weeks I had the script open on the table and found myself going over passages at all times of the day and night. I was even having stress dreams about the show, not uncommon before big events. In one I dreamed that I was on a stage performing and a member of the audience left, then another, then more until I was left on the stage alone, at which point I just stopped and gave up. Another night I dreamed that I was at an open air theatre, and was watching a cast perform a play. I was due to take the stage after their show and so I left to change into costume, but couldn’t find the dressing room, or my clothes, and then couldn’t remember how to get get back to the stage, meaning that when I did arrive all of the audience had given up and gone home. Dreams such as this don’t necessarily mean that I am under-prepared, but do confirm that I am anxious and maybe need to make sure that all of the small details are in place. With that in mind I decided to get the car loaded up with all of my props and costumes on Friday afternoon, so that everything was in place for my Saturday departure. During that day I rehearsed both acts of the show a couple of times, and at last was confident that I was ready.

Saturday dawned and in the morning I was taking my eldest daughter to a football match in which she was playing. During the drive to the fixture, which was an ‘away’ match, a warning light came on in the car and the message said ‘STOP! DANGER OF ENGINE FAILURE’ That didn’t sound good.

I dropped my daughter at her match (with horrible echoes of my second stress dream, we couldn’t find the ground, and were running all over the place before managing to get there just as the starting whistle was blowing), and took the car to a nearby petrol station, where I checked the water and oil levels and hopelessly prodded at sundry leads and pipes, all of which seemed to be connected as they should be. On restarting the car the warning message still flashed up, and it became apparent that there was no way I could risk driving all the way to Bedfordshire with complete engine failure imminent. I picked up my daughter from the match and crept back home putting as little strain through the engine as I could. So much for packing the car with all of my costumes and props in plenty of time.

Once at home Liz and I started making plans. I remembered from my previous visit to Sharnbrook that they have a wonderful prop store under the stage, so I would be able to borrow the large pieces of furniture that I required, The rest of my props: cloths, candlesticks, and even a collapsible hat stand, as well as my costumes, would fit into Liz’s car which is a tiny Mini!

I set off after lunch and after around 90 minutes I pulled up outside The Sharnbrook Hotel, which was apparently deserted – the car park was empty. I was relieved when the automatic doors opened to admit me, but the reception area was as as quiet as the outside view had suggested it may be. I was gratified to see, however, that there was a goodly supply of fliers on the counter proclaiming that Gerald Dickens would be performing Great Expectations at The Sharnbrook Mill Theatre that evening.

There was a striking bell on the desk, so I rang it and a smiling lady eventually appeared to check me in. Although the hotel seemed empty, my room was located in the farthest flung reaches of the building meaning a long walk, but I dropped my bags, and then returned to the car for the short drive to the theatre.

I was welcomed at the front door by Brenda Stafford, who has been responsible for my appearances, and having exchanged greetings and pleasantries, she disappeared to open the stage door so that I could load my belongings onto the stage. As soon as that was done Gerry (stage manager and Brenda’s husband) appeared to take me into the furniture store, from where I could chose the pieces I needed to complete my set. I found a grand chair, upholstered in red velvet, and a small table, and together we returned to the stage where I commenced putting everything in place.

The set of Great Expectations features the ever present figure of Miss Havisham on the stage, and this is constructed over a slender hat stand, painted white, with fabrics draped over it to give the appearance of a human figure. Preparing Miss H is always an uncertain moment, for there is no science to the creation, just a drape here, a pin there, a flick somewhere else until my hat stand seems to stand proud with a sleeve and veil.

The next job was to sort out the technical side of the show. I have scripted Great Expectations with quite a few lighting changes, using different colours to represent cold, eerie scenes or warm, cosy ones. My lighting man, sat in a sort of crow’s nest high in the eves of the old mill building which forms the theatre’s auditorium, was Ron. I had sent my script a couple of weeks before the event and Ron’s son Ricky had carefully programmed all of the cues into the lighting console. Ron would be running the show and we spent a good amount of time going from cue to cue. We had one slight issue, where the lighting effect for Miss Havisham bursting into flames had been focussed on the wrong side of the stage (my fault, as I had not been specific enough in my script), but Ron said that he would try to sort something out, and sure enough when I was walking through the theatre a little later. the semi-strobe effect flared up around Miss Havisham. Theatre techies are definitely ‘can do’ folk.

In contrast to the lighting, the sound for the show is quite simple, using just two sound cues which start each act. Unfortunately, though, the theatre’s sound man had been taken ill, so a willing volunteer in the shape of Peter Laughton was found. With the help of Gerry we downloaded my two cues onto a laptop and Peter practiced playing them to order.

And now it was time to relax. Usually at this time I retreat to my dressing room and maybe will eat a salad or some fruit, but at Sharnbrook I was treated to a proper dinner prepared by Richard West – chicken breast, rolled in bacon, served with mashed potato and broccoli. We all sat around one of the tables in the front of house space and we chatted and laughed and exchanged stories as we ate. Gary Villiers, the most dapperly dressed front of house manager, mentioned that he is an avid collector of old cigarette cards and dug out of his pocket a little bundle depicting Dickens characters dating back to 1923. He told me that he had come across them that afternoon and wanted me to have them – it was such a generous gesture.

Dinner plates were cleared away and replaced with bowls of summer fruits with cream for those who wanted it and a fruit coulis for others. I avoid any dairy on the day of a performance, not because of any allergy but because it tends to thicken the lining of the throat thereby causing an actor to strain his voice. For many years I regarded performers who followed this regime as rather faddy, but since I started a number of years ago I have had many fewer problems with my voice than before.

With supper over I retreated to my dressing room, where I called an old friend of mine, Les Evans. Les used to be a pilot on Concorde and I first met him on a cruise liner in Athens on which both he and I were booked as guest lecturers. We were joining the P&O ship Artemis which was entering the last leg of a world cruise. It was to be a very important trip for me because, apart from Les and his wife Jill, there was also a classical pianist joining the ship – her name was Liz….

Along with a young magician called Oliver, we all hit it off and had one of the most enjoyable fortnights you can imagine.

Back at The Sharnbrook Mill Theatre I prepared for the show, got into my Magwitch costume, and waited for Gerry to confirm that the audience were in place, that Ron and Peter were ready and that he, as stage manager, had control. The house lights dimmed, my recorded voice filled the theatre and on cue I burst onto the stage: ‘Hold your noise!’

It was lovely to be in a full theatre, feeling and hearing the responses of the audience as I introduced them to Joe and Mrs Joe Gargery, Uncle Pumblechook, Miss Havisham and Estella, Herbert Pocket, Wemmick, Jaggers and the rest. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and thankfully the audience did not leave one by one until I was alone.

When I had performed A Christmas Carol in 2020 I had come back to the stage and conducted a Q&A session which had been so popular that Brenda had requested that I repeat the exercise this time, so having taken my bows Ron brought the house lights up and I spent twenty minutes or so answering a good variety of questions, which I have come to enjoy doing more and more. Fortunately somebody asked me if I had written anything myself, which gave me a good opportunity to plug ‘Dickens and Staplehurst’ which happened to be on sale in the foyer, and after I had left the stage I signed a few copies and chatted with some of the audience.

Finally it was time to relax, and Gerry brought me a glass of wine and I sat with the various volunteers and committee members at the theatre, until it was time to close up shop and pack away.

I feel particularly at home in The Sharnbrook Mill Theatre, surrounded by such keen and generous theatrical folk. They care about their theatre and go to huge efforts to ensure its success, and as I said at the end of my previous Sharnbrook blog post I very much look forward to returning!

Well, That Was Quite A Birthday! Part 1: Right Royal Rochester

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Camilla, Duchess of York, Great Expectations, Miriam Margoyles, Pip, Rochester Guildhall

The 7th February was Charles Dickens’ 210th birthday and such is the enormity of his enduring legacy I have been involved in celebrating the event for an entire week. These are the accounts of the various events that I have attended

Rochester Guildhall. Wednesday 2 February

My first journey was to the county of Kent, and specifically to Rochester, on the 2nd February. Rochester is the town most closely associated with Charles Dickens and the ancient buildings feature in many of his novels, including the first (The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club), and the last (The Mystery of Edwin Drood). Although he never actually lived in Rochester, his home at Gad’s Hill Place was nearby, and today the streets are a Mecca for those who love his books and revere him.

Rochester used to be a city in its own right, but lost the status a number of years ago, eventually amalgamating into the larger unitary authority of Medway, but for me and, I suspect most Dickensians, it will always be the City of Rochester. For a long time there was a Dickens visitor attraction built in Eastgate House, which also features in the first and last novels. One would walk through various rooms, each of which had a brilliantly designed and built theatrical set, with various projections, voiceovers and animatronics to bring the scenes to life, and it was an impressive venue for Dickens fans to visit, but unfortunately the historic fabric of the old house couldn’t sustain the daily tramp of visitors and the attraction had to be closed down, which left the City of Rochester with nothing to present to the fans who came from all over the world. Until last week!

At the opposite end of the High Street from Eastgate House is the Guildhall Museum, which tells the entire history of Medway, and for over two years (interrupted by the pandemic) the Council have been planning and constructing a new permanent exhibit to Charles Dickens, called ‘The Making of Dickens’ which was due to be officially opened on the 2nd February. I was contacted by the Council, thanks to the influence of my brother, Ian, with a request to read a short passage from Great Expectations to a VIP guest, who would be performing the opening ceremony. The identity of the guest was at this time unknown, but as the council had originally approached the actress Miriam Margoyles (a major VIP in her own right) to perform the reading, we guessed that the VIP must be very important indeed and soon this was confirmed when the emails began to refer to the VIP in bold type). With Miriam being out of the country, the search for a reader settled on me, and arrangements were made, and still the identity of our VIP was unknown due to security concerns, and so it became apparent that we would be in the presence of royalty. Who, though? The front runner in the ‘Guess The Royal’ stakes was Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, as she has long celebrated and championed the written and spoken word, and is a patron of various charities promoting literacy. Before Christmas she and The Prince of Wales had read passages from A Christmas Carol for a series of videos made by the Charles Dickens Museum, and the fact that a day or two before the event I had a message saying that she (yes, the council let the pronoun slip through the net) would like to share the reading, strengthened my suspicions further.

On the morning of the 2nd I dropped our girls to school and then got on the road for the 2 hour drive to Kent. I was dressed in a suit, but had my costume with me also. The team at The Guildhall had asked for me to be in Victorian attire, and the suit was merely an insurance policy in case I hit traffic and was running late.

Rochester and the Guildhall are both very familiar to me, as I have been performing there since I started my Dickens shows in 1994. Indeed the first reading I ever gave (after my initial performance of A Christmas Carol in December ’93) was in the Guildhall itself, when I read a passage of Nicholas Nickleby to the local Dickens Fellowship branch. Each Summer I return to the city for the Dickens Festival and the beautiful main chamber of the building has been my permanent venue for many years, and it was in that main chamber that I was to read with Camill…..with the VIP.

It was during my journey down that an email came in confirming that the guest was indeed the Duchess of Cornwall, and that I would be briefed on the procedures and protocol when I arrived.

At 12.30 I walked through the door and The Guildhall looked spic and span ready for it Royal visit. To be perfectly honest, it is always in an immaculate condition, and mounting the great staircase makes one feel as if you are in a palace. I was greeted by Ed Woollard who was coordinating the day’s events, and he quickly ran through the timetable with me: At 1.30 a party of thirty school children from the nearby St Margarets at Troy Town school would arrive, and would gather in the Grand Chamber, where I would be also, to await the Duchess. At 2 o’clock The Duchess of Cornwall would arrive and be greeted by costumes characters, supplied by the local Dickens Fellowship branch (of which I am proud to be president.). She would then be taken up to the new exhibit and be shown around by various Council officials and dignitaries, before making her way into the chamber at 2.30, where I and one of the teachers from the school would greet her (these Royals get greeted a lot!). I should address her as ‘Your Royal Highness’ at first and as ‘Ma’am’ subsequently. We would walk to our chairs at the front of the room and following a brief welcome by a member of the council, I would introduce our reading, setting the scene so to speak, and then invite Camilla to begin.

When all was firmly in my mind I went to change into my Victorian costume and when I returned Ed showed me around the exhibition, which is very impressive. Although built in what used to be a rather square, featureless room the designers had made remarkable use of the space by guiding the visitor past a mock up of Charles’ childhood home in Chatham, through a theatre where you can sit and watch a holographic actor portraying Dickens at his reading desk (NOT ME!), and then along a walkway where large panels cause you to stop and look up to read about his journalism, Sketches by Boz and The Pickwick Papers. At the end of the walkway you suddenly find yourself in a town square with a store front, which contains some Dickens memorabilia . This square is a good space and will be used by the educational officer at the museum to talk to students. From the square you pass through a door into a recreation of Dickens’s study at Gad’s Hill Place with his desk in the bay window. For the Royal visit Charles’ walking cane and letter opener had been laid on the desk, but these will be tucked into a display case during normal opening hours. I suggested that the chair be pulled out from the desk slightly, to recreate the famous picture of the study sketched on the day after Dickens died: The Empty Chair.

The Empty Chair

At the end of the exhibition is a map showing all of the local sites associated with Charles Dickens and encouraging visitors to explore the wider region.

I walked through the exhibit again, this time with a photographer in tow, and I posed in each of the rooms, until he had all of the shots he needed (I think he was actually slightly practicing for the Royal walk-through, making sure that light and angles were correct – In effect I was Camilla’s stunt double).

Initial duties done I returned to the Chamber and the school children duly arrived and took off their coats. Together we had an hour to wait, so my job now was to keep them entertained. The students were from Year 5, meaning that they were 9 and 10 years old, and although they were due to study Great Expectations later in the year, they hadn’t yet. Information about the visit had come very late and the teachers had spent one afternoon cramming some basic knowledge about author and text into the young brains. So, when I asked if anyone had any questions about Charles Dickens, the floodgates opened! We had a wonderful time, for the more they asked the more curious they became. After their greeting duties outside, the costumes characters from The Fellowship came into the room, and then the children had fun guessing who was which character.

The imminent arrival of The Duchess interrupted out wonderful session and I took my place at the door where Camilla was introduced to me. I said ‘good afternoon’ remembering to slightly bow my head and add ‘Your Royal Highness’. I mentioned to her that I had thoroughly enjoyed her A Christmas Carol readings, and she seemed genuinely pleased that I had not only seen them but remembered them.

We walked to the front of the room and took our seats. As I had been in the room for so long, and had performed in it so many times before, I felt incredibly at ease, as if it was my own domain and I was welcoming Camilla into it, and in the photographs taken on the day I certainly look very relaxed, while she looks slightly nervous at the prospect of reading.

The children were welcomed by the Council member who was escorting The Duchess, and then he handed over to me to introduce the reading. The passage chosen (not by me, incidentally) was one from early in Great Expectations when Pip is attending a very basic school kept my Mr Wosple’s great aunt (‘…who went to sleep between the hours of six and seven each evening, in the society of youth who payed her twoppence a week for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it’).

I am not sure if the school children fully followed what was going on but when we got to the end they applauded politely. Now it was time for questions, and four children sat in the front row clearly and confidently read theirs out. The nice thing about this was that the questions hadn’t been submitted prior to the event, so that the Duchess’s answers were completely genuine.

1: ‘What is your favourite Charles Dickens book and character?’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities and The Artful Dodger’

2: Why is it so important to read books by authors like Charles Dickens?’ ‘Because their use of language is so beautiful and authors like Dickens tell such wonderful stories. Also, we have so much to learn from the past.’

3: ‘How do you find time to read books in your busy day?’ ‘It is very difficult. Sometimes I try to read in bed, but fall asleep and cant remember what Ive read, so end up reading the same passage the next night and over and over again! I try to save up all of the books that I want to read for holidays, at Christmas or Easter, and read them when we are away.’

4: ‘Where did you get your love of reading and books?’ ‘When I was a little girl my father used to sit on the end of my bed and read stories, and I have always loved the memories of those times’

These answers are paraphrased, but the gist is correct and it was during this time that Camilla was at her happiest and most relaxed. Next on the itinerary was the unveiling of the plaque, which will eventually be on the wall of the exhibition, but for the moment was mounted on a board set on an easel. The staff were very worried that the whole affair would collapse when she pulled the little string to draw back the blue velvet curtain, and Ed was gripping tightly on to the whole structure as she performed her duty. Fortunately disaster did not ensue!

And that marked the end of the visit and with three cheers ringing in her ears, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, left the building to be driven to another venue where she would be greeted again, and shake more hands, and smile and be gracious. In the Guildhall chamber you could almost hear the gasp of relief and everyone relaxed. I said goodbye to the school children and offered to come into their school to talk more about Charles Dickens. The costumed characters and I went around the exhibition and again, until gradually we all drifted away to our homes.

On Tuesday 2 February I had driven a round trip of 4 hours and read from Great Expectations for 2 minutes, but it was a very special day for all of us present. Also it shows how large Charles Dickens still looms over our society, to attract a Royal visit to honour his memory is quite a thing.

Postcript:

Just 2 days after our event it was announced by The Queen that it was her sincere wish that Camilla be known as Queen Consort when Charles takes the throne. It seems obvious to me that The Queen felt that if Camilla could hold her own reading with a Dickens, then she had proved that she was ready for anything. To quote Abel Magwitch: ‘It was me what done it!’