After Charles Darwin’s visit to Ilkley Literature Festival this year, it’s the turn of Charles Dickens to come to Bradford.

The city’s Cathedral plays host to a show dedicated to the great Victorian novelist over two nights in December.

The World of Charles Dickens uses scenes from his novels and his life (1812-1870) to paint a portrait of the creator of some of the most memorable characters in English literature.

Among them, Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol, Bill Sykes from Oliver Twist, Wilkins Micawber from David Copperfield and sadistic Yorkshire headmaster Wackford Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby, will be brought to life by the show’s writers, Colin Lewisohn and Julian Topping.

Mr Lewisohn said: “Dickens was dubbed ‘The man who invented Christmas’ because of the impact of his story A Christmas Carol. So it’s fitting the show is coming to the city during the festive season. It’s a family show, full of laughter and tears.”

The show is much like Dickens’s own experience of family life. His father John was put in debtors’ prison. The young Dickens worked in a blacking factory by the Thames, before making his name as a brilliant Parliamentary reporter and then a novelist.

Mr Lewisohn said: “I have been enthralled, amused and shocked by Charles Dickens. His characters are simply wonderful, and we have over 40 of them in the show. He exposed the underbelly of England like no other English writer before him, probably not until George Orwell.”

When Dickens read excerpts from Bleak House and other stories at newly-opened St George’s Hall in Bradford in December 1854, more than 3,000 people reportedly crammed into the place to watch his dramatisations.

They may also have been curious to see the man who, in 1852, had lampooned textile magnate Titus Salt – ‘The Great Yorkshire Llama’ – in his magazine Household Words.

In Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens located one of the most notorious schools in literature, Dotheboys Hall, in Yorkshire. The World of Charles Dickens is on Friday, December 11, and Saturday, December 12, at 7pm. Tickets are £9 and £8 concessions, book on (01274) 777720.

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