After my understandably bad-tempered day yesterday, I was able to relax for a couple of hours in the evening touring Italy in the agreeable company of actor David Harewood. While revering Shakespeare, Harewood had always thought of Dickens as ‘an author I wouldn’t like’, until a copy of Pictures of Italy ‘landed on my desk’. (How did that happen? ( Read more... )

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Congratulations if you managed to sit through the whole of the first episode of BBC 1’s total rewriting of Great Expectations without falling asleep or switching off. Apparently filmed entirely in the dark and featuring what felt like hours of close-ups of Pip’s face it was, surprisingly, boring. I waited until Miss Havisham appeared and switched ( Read more... )

I wanted to start this post with the portrait of the young, dandified Dickens painted by Maclise but all pics seem subject to copyright. You can find it on the National Portrait Gallery page. The more familiar, ravaged face of thirty years later shows how overwork can kill a person. For years, I struggled to get through The Pickwick Papers, always ( Read more... )

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I’m reading Bleak House for the millionth time and that quote from the wonderful opening paragraph just about sums up today. Early frost, followed by the deluge. I’ve been out and I got very cold and *very* wet. Thank goodness that, unlike in Dickens’ time, we don't have streets full of mud.

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The weather is foul: day after day of rain, wind and darkness that mean lights on all day. My thoughts turn to bright, frosty days and skating.


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