Claire Tomalin Celebrating Dickens in Southwark Cathedral  

Following an afternoon of activities to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth, award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin will talk about her book, Charles Dickens: A Life (published by Viking in 2011).

Running order

Exhibition (running all day, Cathedral opening hours 09:00am): a selection of Charles Dickens’ letters and other artefacts will be on display (loaned by kind permission of Lord Harris of Peckham).

During the afternoon (12 noon - 4:30pm): Bells Ring Out: The Ancient Society College Youths and Southwark Cathedral’s Bellringers are ringing a full peal to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth. 

In his journals, Charles Dickens recorded visits he made to the Ancient Society of College Youths in the bell tower of what was then St Saviour’s church, now Southwark Cathedral.

2:30pm: Assemble at the Millennium Courtyard, Southwark Cathedral for a Guided Walk: Dickensian Southwark and visit to St George the Martyr Church, Borough High Street – with Cathedral Guides(s).                
Cost: £5 adults/ £4.50 Senior Citizens and students – includes a donation to St George the Martyr Church.

Dickens would have walked along what is now Borough High Street each day, passing the church/Cathedral that he knew so well, to cross London Bridge on his way to work at the blacking factory.

Adjacent to the Cathedral is Glazier’s Hall, the Guild hall of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers, next to which in the musical Oliver!, Nancy is murdered, although of course, in the novel Nancy is murdered in her house. The George Inn public house, mentioned in Little Dorrit, will be visited en-route to the outer walls of the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison where Dickens’ parents and sister were at one time incarcerated.

A visit to St George the Martyr church [3:30pm] will be made. Little Dorrit, on at least one occasion, got locked out of the gaol and rested on the vestry books there; her wedding was held there and is marked by a reference in a stained glass window in that church.

The Escorted Walk will return to Southwark Cathedral, permitting participants to take afternoon tea in the Cathedral Refectory, before attending.

For further details: David Payne 020 7367 6734 or david.payne@southwark.anglican.org
                                                
5:30pm: Choral Evensong at Southwark Cathedral to mark the Bi-centenary of Charles Dickens with Readings  

6:30pm: (following Choral Evensong) Talk by award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin, author of Charles Dickens: A Life published by Viking in 2011.
                                                            
Claire says: “Writing Charles Dickens’ biography was like writing five biographies”.

Much loved for his novels, which turned a critical eye on Victorian England, Dickens was also a prodigious journalist, Court reporter, traveller, editor, theatrical impresario, walker, philanthropist and philanderer. 

Drinks reception to follow talk.

For further details: Rose Harding 020 7367 6704 or rose.harding@southwark.anglican.org