December 15, 2024 - On this midwinter full moon we're joined from across the sea by Gerald Charles Dickens, who talks with us about our favorite story - his great-great grandfather's classic Christmas ghost story, A Christmas Carol. Join us to find out all about Gerald Dickens' childhood memories of A Christmas Carol, its origins and its sly sleight of hand.

• What is it about A Christmas Carol that it remains such a classic and a powerful story?
• In defence of Scrooge the businessman - not a complete villain?
• Charles Dickens' early childhood with a father in debtor's prison, child labor, humiliation, lonliness and parental abandonment
• The importance of books and stories in Dickens childhood
• The Man who Invented Christmas
• Dickens' writings and his marvelous descriptions of food, celebration and togetherness
• The tradition of ghost stories for Christmas, and Dickens' love of ghost stories
• The haunting tale of TheSignalman, and its real-life, deadly inspiration
• Dickens' terrible PTSD related to rail travel
• Gerald Dickens' favorite A Christmas Carol films
• Gerald's American tour of his one-man show of A Christmas Carol and how he got started working as an actor with his grandfather's writings; the eucatastrophe of forgetting his notes!
• How Charles Dickens' stories lend themselves to actors' interpretations
• Favorite lines from A Christmas Carol
• Was Marley Scrooge's only friend?
• Noticing something new in A Christmas Carol every time we read it
• Dickens' influence on our now-traditional celebrations of Christmas
• Gerald Dickens talks about his own books, including his experiences over 30 years of touring with A Christmas Carol - Gerald Dickens: My Life on the Road with A Christmas Carol
• What it's like to stand on the same stages as his great-great grandfather
• Another book by Gerald Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst: A Biography of a Rail Crash - the real life traumatic incident that led to the writing of The Signalman

Mentioned in the podcast:

On the Road with Gerald Dickens blog - https://geralddickens.wordpress.com/

Gerald Dickens' website, videos and books - https://www.geralddickens.org/

Charles Dickens' books read as audiobooks by Gerald Dickens: https://www.audible.co.uk/search?searchNarrator=Gerald+Dickens

Denholm Elliott in The Signalman - I couldn't find it on Youtube at the moment, but Tom and I were able to watch it here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6c73c3

Tom's stories recorded during lockdown, Tales for Troubled Times: https://www.orkneyology.com/tales-from-tom.html

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