It’s Christmas Eve, and Dominic takes a deep dive with you all through A Christmas Carol. Returning to the series is the inimitable Prof. John Bowen (who recently worked on David Edgar’s Carol adaptation for the RSC) and who like many of us, re-reads this ghostly little book every Christmas and has pondered its power and meaning for decades.

The Carol Philosophy that Dickens expresses so generously in this story is truly universal: everyone has a chance to change and not be fixed, or branded, as the worst version of themselves. Dickens’ righteous anger here is channeled and diffused with goodwill, laughter and an unyielding determination to think only the best of people …

Joining the series again to read excerpts is the fantastic Hollie Hales and the violin you will hear throughout is played by the brilliant Alexis Bennett

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Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Support the show

If you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!

*This episode focuses on the theme of domestic violence*

Dominic shares a bonus fragment from his last interview with Dr. Lydia Craig on The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain ...

It is a moment in the story where Redlaw comes across ‘a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep or forlorn’ and ‘whose head’ is ‘bent down on her hands and knees.’ Redlaw sees that her arms are ‘black, her face cut, and her bosom bruised.’

It’s a deeply powerful, moment in the story, that reveals Dickens’ compassion not only for the poor, but for women on the receiving end of violence and abuse at the hands of husbands, partners, fathers or sons …

Given that there is a spike in this cruel and vicious behaviour over the holiday season it makes this moment in Dickens’ final Christmas book a clarion call for our society today …

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If you like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Support the show

If you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!

Todays episode is on Dickens’ final Christmas Book The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain. A deeply powerful story, where the chemist, Stephen Redlaw is offered the chance to forget all his painful memories by a Phantom who is a ghastly copy of himself drawn from the shadows in his study. Redlaw accepts the ghost’s bargain … but then faces a desperate struggle to have this spell lifted again, when to his horror he discovers that his new gift has a 'King Midas' quality of infecting everyone he meets (or nearly everyone) with the same curse of forgetting …

Light in the story comes in the form of Millie, one of Dickens’ good little women and a ministering angel to the people around her. Millie, her sparky husband William Swidger and her ancient father in law Philip, quietly try to help Stephen: turning up the lamps or decorating his study with that powerful wintry emblem, holly …

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Dr Lydia Craig, Lecturer in English at the University of Eastern Illinois. Lydia co-authored The Verse of Charles Dickens for Edinburgh University Press and her specialities include Nineteenth Century Race and Gender and The English Novel.She is both Associate editor of The Dickensian and The Charles Dickens Letters project, Co-editor of Dickens Search and Treasurer of The Dickens Society …

Support the show

If you like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Support the show

If you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!

This episode marks the 3rd birthday of Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire! 🔥

In this first Christmas episode for 2024 Dominic is joined again by the critically acclaimed author, broadcaster, and art-historian Lucinda Hawksley. And as they return to Dickens’ Christmas books their focus this time is on the illustrations found in each of them.

Many of you will of course be familiar with the name of John Leech, who’s images for A Christmas Carol are now inseparable from Scrooge’s story, and how we picture it, but as we move on through the rarer books The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man Leech is joined by other eminent artists such as Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, Edwin Landseer, Frank Stone and John Tenniel …

Dominic caught up with Lucinda while she was putting the finishing touches to her new book Victorian Christmas (published by WW Norton) which is a fun and festive look at all our Christmas customs , both ancient and modern, and the part her great-great-great Grandfather Charles Dickens played in popularising them for us today. There is a link to every Christmas illustration we talk about in this episode via the brilliant Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery

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If you like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Support the show

If you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!

Welcome to CHRISTMAS at Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire! 🔥

The very first of our special Festive will go live shortly ...

And If you’re new to this series, there are some incredible episodes already waiting for you to listen to. Interviews with leading actors, academics, writers, historians, and descendants of the great man him self!

Guests such as: Stephen Fry, Miriam Margolyes, Armando Iannucci, Rosie Holt, John Mullan, Lucinda Hawksley, Robert Douglas Fairhurst, Andrew Davies & Alice Loxton … and many many more!

I hope you have as much fun listening to these episodes this Christmas, as I have had the honour to record them …

So wherever in the world you're listening from ... MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!

Support the show

If you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!

Dominic is joined today by the inimitable Professor Ian Haywood, of the Centre for Inclusive Humanities at the University of Roehampton.
Together they delve into the astonishing 'Riots of Eighty' that gripped London for a week and were brought thrillingly to life in Dickens' Barnaby Rudge ...

Ian is a specialist in the radical politics and visual culture of the period of 1750-1850, and has published extensively on that period in books such as Bloody Romanticism: Spectacular Violence and The Politics of Representation and Queen Caroline and the Power of Caricature in Georgian England (for Palgrave); and appropriately for today The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (for Cambridge University Press) …

Reading the following excerpts in this episode is wonderful actress Hollie Hales:

1, 2 & 16. Barnaby Rudge (C. 68 Dickens)
3. Sketches of Popular Tumults (Craik)
4, 5, 6, 11 & 13. The Scots Magazine (June 1780)
7 & 10. Narrative of the late Riots and Disturbances ... (Holcroft)
8. The Riot Act
9. Kentish Gazette (June 1780)
11. (Source to be inserted!)
12. King's Proclamation
14. Northampton Mercury (July 1780)
15. Oxford Journal (August 1780)

The sound of crowds, gunshots & horses in this episode were used with permission from Epidemic Sound

Support the show

If you like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Support the show

If you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!

Dominic is joined again by the inimitable Dr. Pete Orford for Part II of his examination of The Mystery of Edwin Drood ...

Pete’s book Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens’ Unfinished Novel And Our Endless Attempts To End It … (Pen & Sword books) is our guide throughout. It is a hugely entertaining read where scholarly citations and tomfoolery combine with vibrant illustrations by Alys Jones … there is a link purchase this in the description.

And reading extracts today, it is an honour to welcome the fantastic actors Joseph Chance and Dan Wheeler together they are part of a quartet known as The Apocalypse Players: an award-winning podcast where role-playing and improvisation combine to create immersive stories for eager listeners each week.

Dominic also asks AI to try and write an ending to Edwin Drood with some truly hilarious results!

Support the show

If you like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Support the show

If you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!

Support the show

If you like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Support the show

If you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!