Program Title
Dickens of London

Based On
Historical fact

Adapted By
Wolf Mankowitz

Number of Episodes:
10

Description
Traces the extraordinary life of Charles Dickens from his early penniless childhood in Chatham and London during the 1820's to the unprecedented success he later enjoyed on both sides of the Atlantic.


Original broadcast date
1977-08-28

Cast	Characters
Roy Dotrice	Charles Dickens/John Dickens
Simon Bell	Charles Dickens (Boy)
Gene Foad	Charles Dickens (Young Man)
Diana Coupland	Mrs. Dickens
Raymond Francis
Holly Palance
Lynsey Baxter
Vernon Dobtcheff
David Healy
Peter Hugo-Daly
Graham Seed
Karen Dotrice
Henrietta Baynes
Patsy Kensit
Richard Kay
Kenneth Colley
John Nettles
Trevor Bowen
Ben Kingsley
Arthur Hewlett
Ian Collier
Llewellyn Rees
Bob Sessions
Roy Marsden
Milton Johns.

Credits
Executive Producer: David Cunliffe
Producer: Marc Miller
Director: Michael Ferguson, Marc Miller

Intro
DICKENS OF LONDON/Episode 1/Intro by Alastair Cooke

Good evening, I'm Alistair Cooke.

Tonight we begin a dramatization in ten episodes of thirty-two years of the life of England's greatest novelist, Charles Dickens.

He was born in a seaport town in Kent. He was the son of a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, John Dickens, a kind of verbal dandy, an absolute charmer and an absolutely hopeless breadwinner.

And he was married to a featherbrain, who, in the usual Victorian way, gave him eight children. Unlike most Victorian families though, they lost only two of them. By the way, Father Dickens was the model for Mr. Micawber, and is played here by the fine character actor Roy Dotrice.

Each episode is seen as a long flashback, from Dickens in America in 1867. He was here doing a very successful tour of readings from his own works. But he was fifty-five, ailing, exhausted, and haunted by nightmares about his childhood. And in his waking hours he was harassed by ticket scalpers. As we come in on them they are hounding Dicken's lecture agent Mr. Dolby.

Now, episode one, Dickens of London.





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