It wouldn't be Christmas without a little Dickens!

It wouldn’t be Christmas without a little Dickens!

December 19, 2020 Comments Off

If you’re looking for a Dickens and Christmas fix with a bit of a difference this year, never fear. As luck would have it, a number of our guides have virtual tours across the Christmas season that feature various aspects of the man and his work.

Efforts to revive the fortunes of the festive season had been under way for around 30 years by the time Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843.

So whilst Dickens didn’t (as is often stated) “invent” the modern Christmas as we know it, his hugely popular story of the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge quickly became the seminal representation of what Christmas “should be all about” and accelerated matters greatly. So much so that Dickens and Christmas have since then become inextricably linked.

Click the tour titles for booking details (only £6.00 per ticket!).

Marilyn Greene kicks things off with her Heights of Dickens virtual tour on Monday 21st December at 6.00 pm.

Dickens was spending a lot of time in Highgate at the end of the 1830s and early 1840s.

During the time he was writing a Christmas Carol he was visiting the home Margaret Gillies in Highgate who painted a miniature portrait of him

This was only re discovered in 2017 and is now at the Dickens Museum.

Next up is Mark Rowland with his Dickens After Dark virtual tour on Tuesday 22nd December at 7.00 pm (and also Tuesday 29th December at 5.00 pm).

Given the sheer number of characters Dickens created, he had a voracious appetite for locations and often used them to “position” characters in the minds of his readers. The opening lines to A Christmas Carol is a classic example of this, placing Scrooge as a key player in The City of London right at the start of the story:

“Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to.” (‘Change being the nickname for The Royal Exchange at Bank Junction).

Rob Smith takes up the baton on Thursday 24th December at 11.00 am with his Dickens in Rochester virtual tour

Dickens spent much of his childhood in the Rochester area and then spent the later part of his life there too

Rochester was a place that inspired Dickens writing.

On his virtual tour Rob will talk about the real Tudor building in Rochester that inspired Dickens’ short Christmas story The Seven Poor Travellers (A Christmas Carol was far from the only Christmas story he wrote!).

Running the anchor leg of the Dickens virtual tours in the week leading up to Christmas is David Charnick with his A Dickens of a City virtual tour on Thursday 24th December at 4.00 pm

On his virtual tour, David visits Ebenezer Scrooge in his lonely room on that Christmas Eve.

We feel the thrill of horror when the ghostly figure of Jacob Marley appears.

But also we see Scrooge transformed, able to help others and avoid the agonies of Marley and the other spirits who can only bewail the suffering they see.

Aside from our virtual tours dedicated solely to the great man, Dickens also makes a guest appearance on a number of other virtual tours over the Christmas period

Jane Parker will be running her A Covent Garden Christmas – Turkey, Trees and Traditions virtual tour several times between now and Twelfth Night.

On it you will hear about how in the 1840s people went Christmas mad, provoked by Prince Albert’s decorated tree and Charles Dickens’ book, A Christmas Carol.

Find out why Bob Cratchitt’s goose was trumped by Scrooge’s turkey, and see evidence of where real Victorians would have bought ingredients for their Christmas meals on Jane’s virtual tour around the Covent Garden area.

On Richard Watkins‘ frothing brew of a virtual Soho pub tour, Mr Blake’s Tree Full of Angels, on Tuesday 22nd and Monday 28th December at 6.00 pm, he walks down a street, Dickens described as a “bygone, tumble-down street” and visits a pub the great writer features in Nicholas Nickleby.

And Sean Patterson has promised a mention of Oliver Twist and the theft of Mr Brownlow’s handkerchief in his Clerkenwell Literary Connections virtual tour on the evening of Wednesday 23 December at 7.00 pm.

All of these are live virtual tours conducted via Zoom video conferenecing supported with an illustrated presentation. There is every opportunity to interact with your guide both during (via the Zoom chat function) and after the virtual tour. You will be sent full access details upon booking.