Celebrate the 212th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens at his first home, right here in Portsmouth.
Every year the Charles Dickens' Birthplace Museum hosts a special event to honour the great author, showcase his work and celebrate his connection to the city.
Every year the Charles Dickens' Birthplace Museum hosts a special event to honour the great author, showcase his work and celebrate his connection to the city.
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00 Okie dokes, my name is Ian Dickens or full name Ian David Charles Dickens and that's a clue
00:05 to the fact that my great-great-grandfather is the man who we're celebrating today. This is where he
00:13 was born in 1812. So every year Portsmouth City Council very kindly open the museum for free and
00:21 we have this ceremony to mark his birth by placing a wreath on the door and then in a minute we'll go
00:26 over to the statue in Guildhall and place a wreath there and it places a wreath really to mark
00:32 the start of this extraordinary journey that Charles Dickens went on. None of his works have
00:38 ever gone out of print and you can go to any country in the world and show a picture of his
00:44 face and everybody knows who he is. He was a global superstar by the time he died and he still is.
00:52 And why should the city be so proud to have a relation to Charles Dickens?
00:56 Well what a son, I mean Portsmouth has got lots of famous sons and daughters but Charles Dickens
01:02 is certainly one of them. He wasn't here for an awful long time, he was here for two or three
01:09 years before they moved to Chatham. His father worked at the dockyard in the pay office but he
01:13 came back to the city to do some public readings. His son was here because his son Sidney trained at
01:20 the Eastman Naval Academy in Southsea to join the Royal Navy. He joined his first ship over at Haslar
01:25 Creek in Gosport. Charles Dickens came down on the train to see him off and then in the summer
01:31 of 1849 Dickens was here with his wife and then eight children and they boarded a ferry
01:37 from Portsmouth over to ride on the Isle of Wight where they spent four months of their summer on the
01:42 island having a family holiday but he was also riding David Copperfield while he was there.
01:47 David Copperfield is the most autobiographical of books when you read about David Copperfield
01:52 you're reading about the life of Charles Dickens.
01:55 And do you have a favourite Charles Dickens novel you've sold?
01:58 Oh that's a good question. Well Pickwick is great, that was his first and it's an entertaining book,
02:06 it's a funny story and when it was published it became a publishing phenomenon. I'd never seen
02:11 so many books sold so Pickwick is great as a romp. David Copperfield is fascinating for the
02:18 reasons I've just said because it so reflects his life. Mr Macorber in the book is based on
02:24 his father John Dickens. Mr Macorber is always in debt, John Dickens was sent to prison,
02:30 to debtors prison for bad debt so there's some similarities there. And then a Tale of Two Cities
02:38 is a wonderful story, you know the opening line 'it was the best of times, it was the worst of
02:43 times' incredible iconic way to pull you into a story. So there's so many. Amazing, thank you so
02:50 much for talking to us. Thank you. Could you start by telling me who you are and what you do for
02:56 Portsmouth Library? My name is Simon Moran, I work for the City Library Service, I'm a casual
03:03 library assistant which means I work every library in the city and get involved in wonderful
03:08 exhibitions like this. Amazing and could you tell me about your lovely van behind you? Well this is
03:13 one of our genuine tuk-tuks, it's a fully electric vehicle. This one is called Lindy, we've got
03:20 another one coming in the month or so this time which is going to be called Jackie. They take the
03:25 names from two very long-serving library managers who have now retired so we thought we'd honour
03:31 them and because of the nature of the vehicle itself and the way it's designed and built it's
03:36 fun, it's fully electric and it was fully funded by the Arts Council, they absolutely love the idea.
03:45 So its primary use is going to be exhibitions like this, maybe through the summer we'll be able to
03:52 do light deliveries to people that house them and as I've already mentioned we'll be able to
03:58 concentrate on specific courses for schools and our students like that.
04:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]