news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9680000/9680653.stm
Can you believe that the Charles Dickens Museum on Doughty Street is closing for repairs from April – December 2012 during the Bicentennial Year of the author’s birth?
Director Florian Schweizer says, “maybe it’s not such a bad moment to do the renovations.”
“While in any other year our closure might have been a problem we feel quite confidently that we’ve created such a strong program of events in and around London and around the country that for that short period the public probably won’t miss us too much.”
Dickens’ lovers including his many descendants are understandably irate. Comments?
London: Dickens Museum closed for repairs in centennial year? Oh, no!
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Sorry, I meant BICENTENNIAL, of course, for Dickens (1812-1870)
Well, I've been there. It has/had some interesting information about his life and work, but it is just one of the places he lived, and as a museum is/was just a bit old-fashioned.
Until 10 June there is the Dickens and London exhibition at the Museum of London, which is well worth it:
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/London-Wall/Whats-on/Exhibitions-Displays/Dickens-London/Default.htm
Eventually, Gads Hill, his home in Kent, will open as a museum, but not just yet.
And his best memorial is, of course, the works themselves.
His birthplace in Portsmouth is also visitable (although perhaps not worth a special visit if you're not in the vicinity, unless you're a real Dickens superfan). It's got the couch he died on, but not much else directly connected with him.
Patrick,
Thank you for the link to the new Dickens exhibition – so much to celebrate including the author’s concern/support for lesser known writers and artists of his day. After reading his life (CHARLES DICKENS by Charles Slater), one would wonder how he had time to write! Not to forget his ten children and family hangers-on who sought his support.
Happy to hear that his place in Gad’s Hill will be opened eventually. Obviously, he and his family loved the place.
Many commemorations of Dickens’s reading tours to America (1842 & 1867) are being observed here. Special among them was his visit on his first trip to the Lowell Mills some thirty miles from Boston where he praised the “ideal” living conditions of the mill girls – a situation soon to change.
Nonconformist, thank you for the tidbit about Portsmouth. Of course, Dickens traveled extensively in England which greatly stimulated his imagination for story lines according to his own testimony.
Here’s to Dickens, no matter where we are this year!