:00:32. > :00:36.On the Book Review Show tonight, one man, many characters. The
:00:36. > :00:43.inimtable, Charles Dickens. Simon Callow sees Dickens as showman and
:00:43. > :00:47.performer, in his study, one of several buy oing fees. Dickens on
:00:47. > :00:53.screen, everything from David Lean to The Wire. Who are the authors
:00:53. > :00:58.that have lingered too long in Dickens' shadow, our panel
:00:58. > :01:04.nominates favourites. Family favourites, Ethan Hawke talks
:01:04. > :01:11.through her desert island books. We have great expectations of the
:01:12. > :01:21.panel, writers all. John Carey the Professor of English at Oxford
:01:21. > :01:27.University, whose works include What Good Are The Arts. Kate Mosse,
:01:27. > :01:33.Orange Prize for Fiction winner. Geoff Dyer, a novelist and essayist,
:01:33. > :01:39.whose recent review of Julian Barnes earned him a nomination.
:01:39. > :01:46.Good evening and welcome to review show book special, topping off a
:01:46. > :01:51.week of Dickens celebrations with our own homage. Our panel is here
:01:51. > :01:55.with their views on the place of Dickens in books. You can e-mail or
:01:55. > :01:59.tweet us during the show, and we would be delighted to find out what
:01:59. > :02:05.is your favourite screen adaptation of Dickens, and what novels have
:02:05. > :02:11.lived too far in his shadow. Simon Callow has come to know Dickens
:02:11. > :02:19.well, taking on the persona on stage and screen, he has penned a
:02:19. > :02:25.book about Dickens' theatricality. Publishers are never slow to
:02:25. > :02:30.realise the potential of a big an versery, and a raft of dick --
:02:30. > :02:35.anniversary, a raft of Dickens' themed books have hit the shelves.
:02:35. > :02:39.Four books have dealt with his life in four different ways. Claire
:02:39. > :02:44.Tomalin's thorough biography, which mines archives in search of new
:02:44. > :02:48.revelations, Oxford don, Robert Douglas Fairhurst, goes back to his
:02:48. > :02:53.beginnings to search for the sometimes traumatic experiences
:02:53. > :02:57.that made the man and sowed the seeds of the fictional children.
:02:57. > :03:03.And great, great-grand daughter of the man himself, Ethan Hawke, has
:03:03. > :03:08.delivered a lavishly illustrated bicentenary coffee table book.
:03:08. > :03:14.Simon Callow, unsurprisingly, has looked at the inate theatricality
:03:14. > :03:19.of the author, who called him they have The Sparkler of Albion, with
:03:19. > :03:25.his Charles Dickens Great Theatre of the World. Lives have fascinated
:03:25. > :03:31.me. I have always been fascinated by greatness, by the idea of
:03:31. > :03:35.someone projecting themselves into the world on a very large scale.
:03:35. > :03:40.Wherever you are turn Dickens is performing. He's always on. Even
:03:40. > :03:47.when he writes a letter, it is a fabulous performance, as an actor,
:03:47. > :03:52.I know what that means to be always interested in communicating
:03:52. > :03:58.directly for an audience. To be conscious of the effect you are
:03:58. > :04:02.having. Here's a flat iron worth its weight in gold. Here is a
:04:02. > :04:07.frying pan, artificially flavoured. I was fascinated by the degree to
:04:07. > :04:14.which, as a reader, one is in touch with the writer. You are aware of
:04:14. > :04:19.this great performer telling his story in a bravura kind of a way.
:04:19. > :04:23.It seemed to me it might be illuminating to go through his life
:04:23. > :04:29.and think at what point it touched the theatre. The answer is, at
:04:29. > :04:36.almost every single point. Clearly the characters are inspired by
:04:36. > :04:43.theatrical types. Whether we think of them as stereotypes or ark types
:04:43. > :04:49.is another matter -- arky types, is another matter. They have a clarity,
:04:49. > :04:55.you know what they are about always. Wait in which he builds them in
:04:55. > :05:00.long rhetorical arcs. Times the plays can seem like a parade of
:05:00. > :05:06.eccentricities, or they can seem rather doggedly realistic in
:05:06. > :05:12.another sense, you know. Other parts of his work. The narrative
:05:12. > :05:20.tone, the author's voice, the way he intervenes in the story, makes
:05:20. > :05:30.them something quite else. There is this remarkable thread of
:05:30. > :05:30.
:05:30. > :05:33.Surrealism in his work, his fan it is a kal writing. -- fantastical
:05:33. > :05:37.writing. The way they morph and change and take on strange shapes,
:05:37. > :05:40.until you are almost hallucinating while you are reading, that is hard
:05:40. > :05:50.to convey on the stage. You would have thought it was easier to
:05:50. > :05:54.
:05:54. > :05:58.convey on screen, but nobody has tried to do that. Even the most
:05:58. > :06:01.famous of them, like Oliver Twist, they are heightened, but not
:06:02. > :06:08.actually fluid in the way that Dickens is. You mean he never went
:06:08. > :06:12.there, eh, there you are, the boy is an imposter. It can't be, it
:06:12. > :06:16.can't be. What do you mean it can't be, you old women never believe
:06:16. > :06:20.anything but quack doctors and lying story books. He was a dear
:06:20. > :06:23.grateful, gentle time, I know what children are, I have done this for
:06:23. > :06:29.40 years, people who can't say the same shouldn't say anybody about
:06:29. > :06:33.them, that is my opinion. That will be all.
:06:33. > :06:40.They are not quite like Shakespeare's characters, which
:06:41. > :06:49.seem to have the actual illusion of real and ordinary life about them.
:06:49. > :06:54.Who seem in the process of flux themselves. Dickens characters are
:06:54. > :07:00.much more complex. He likes to show them from many different angles, it
:07:00. > :07:10.is a challenge for a drama tis, and actor and cinematographer. Dickens
:07:10. > :07:10.
:07:10. > :07:14.was a brilliant stage manager, or producer of the play, He directed
:07:14. > :07:20.beautifully, and his own performance, it was stunningly
:07:20. > :07:26.staged, the gas light frameed his face. He never moved from the
:07:26. > :07:31.lecturn. He was great at commanding the attention of the house, he
:07:31. > :07:37.would stand before them that his entrance provoked the standing
:07:37. > :07:44.ovation. He stood there and let it dwindle to nothing. Only then, when
:07:44. > :07:48.he had achieved total silence would he start, "Marley was dead...". He
:07:49. > :07:55.often said to people, this is what I should really be doing with my
:07:55. > :08:01.life. And almost the last comment of that kind was about a week
:08:01. > :08:05.before he died. He wasing through London, he pointed at a theatre,
:08:05. > :08:08.and he said, -- he was walking through London, he pointed at
:08:08. > :08:13.theatre, and he said, do you know what my secret ambition was, he
:08:13. > :08:17.never waited for an answer, he said I would have been in the theatre,
:08:17. > :08:23.writing all the plays, assembled my company and controlled them
:08:23. > :08:28.absolutely. There is this idea of the director as God appealed to
:08:28. > :08:34.Dickens very much indeed. When he directed plays, and he always acted
:08:34. > :08:43.in the plays that he directed, he was interested in the whole art of
:08:43. > :08:53.the theatre. We will talk about the all the buy oing fees as if they
:08:53. > :08:57.
:08:58. > :09:01.inform -- buy oing fees as if they inform what we are talking about.
:09:01. > :09:06.Simon Callow, it was said he is Charles Dickens, do you think he's
:09:06. > :09:10.right about putting theatricality to the fore? I think he's right
:09:10. > :09:18.about that. His book has got Dickensian dynamism and energy,
:09:18. > :09:22.which I like. It is only a bit of Dickens, Dickens is many Dickens es.
:09:22. > :09:26.Nobody could decide what colour eyes he had. It is like that with
:09:26. > :09:30.biographies. What colour, in a sense, leaves out by this
:09:30. > :09:34.commanding -- what Callow leaves out, with this demanding theatrical
:09:34. > :09:37.figure, who is always hiding his own past, is actually the kind of
:09:38. > :09:43.Dickens that Claire Tomalin brings rather more to the fore, which is
:09:43. > :09:50.the deeply benevolent man, a man who will give up his time, even at
:09:50. > :09:55.his busiest, to save a, there is a maid of all works, skivvy, who is
:09:55. > :10:02.murdered, or has killed her new born child it's on the jury. He
:10:02. > :10:07.takes pity on her, hires a lawyer, saves her life. He's the age of 28,
:10:07. > :10:12.he's terribly busy, but he does it. Now, that is not just theatricality.
:10:12. > :10:15.We will come on to that breath of the Claire Tomalin, that. But
:10:15. > :10:19.sticking with Simon Callow for a minute. The idea that Dickens is
:10:19. > :10:22.always on, I thought that was good expression, that he was on. He was
:10:22. > :10:27.always this character that wanted to dress differently and make a
:10:27. > :10:32.showman of himself. He himself was a performance, Dickens himself?
:10:32. > :10:36.Absolutely, I loved the book. He says, right at the beginning, this
:10:36. > :10:40.is not the proper biography, he lists all the ones he thinks are
:10:40. > :10:45.better. It is a very valid point. Firstly, because I think Dickens
:10:45. > :10:48.did write like a director. Everything about his characters are
:10:48. > :10:55.about entrances and exits, how big they are, how small they are, how
:10:55. > :10:59.they work with each other. It is theatrical novel writing, more than
:10:59. > :11:02.anybody else. This second idea of him always being on, is why the
:11:02. > :11:10.characters still live. He's breathing life into them all the
:11:10. > :11:14.time, because that is how he lives. All of that sense we get from
:11:14. > :11:19.Tomalin that he's always on the move. It is that child when I was
:11:19. > :11:23.six given a penny theatre and making the characters go up and
:11:23. > :11:26.down. That seam of theatricality, it was not all he was, but
:11:26. > :11:31.absolutely defining what Callow does, is he's writing gossip,
:11:31. > :11:35.almost, he's like his best friend. It is not a biography, it is, this
:11:35. > :11:40.is my friend, I love this man, and I want to be part of it. Did you
:11:40. > :11:44.get a different sense of Dickens from the Callow book? Dickens comes
:11:45. > :11:49.across very, very powerfully, you get a real sense of the flesh and
:11:49. > :11:52.blood character of Dickens, that point that Callow makes about I
:11:52. > :12:00.have been him. You get the impression that certainly he has.
:12:00. > :12:05.But then, I think that lion of Warren Mitchell's that he quotes,
:12:05. > :12:10.you could say you have written this book, we need now to edit you. It
:12:10. > :12:17.is all written as he speaks, we heard it there now. Dickens is a
:12:17. > :12:22.great exaggerator, but the exaggeration is always tied to a
:12:22. > :12:27.particular physical Israelty. Callow's exaggeration goes into the
:12:27. > :12:32.realm of effusiveness, he said at one point, Dickens exploded like a
:12:32. > :12:37.nail bomb, and you want to say, no he didn't. There is another
:12:37. > :12:43.incredible bit, Dickens is 15 and engaged in some sort of amateur
:12:43. > :12:53.theatrical production on drury lane, and Callow says -- drawery lane,
:12:53. > :12:57.Callow says it was not a Drury Lane, Callow says it was a world away
:12:57. > :13:03.from the blacking factory, you think where does that put him,
:13:03. > :13:08.light years away, but it is only a 20 minute walk. We go to the
:13:08. > :13:13.passion of Simon Callow to the dispassionate biography that is
:13:13. > :13:21.Claire Tomalin. As an immense calling on all the archives. She
:13:22. > :13:26.comes from a point of view of another story she wrote first?
:13:26. > :13:29.he can first, what better biographer could you have than
:13:29. > :13:32.Claire Tomalin. It is the most extraordinarily measured piece of
:13:32. > :13:36.analysis. I loved the Hardy biography for the same reason. The
:13:37. > :13:42.sense that there are things that we cannot know, but one can tip toe to
:13:42. > :13:47.the edge of that gap, between knowledge. She then becomes us. She
:13:47. > :13:51.goes backwards and forwards between saying I think this and that,
:13:51. > :13:56.suddenly "we" feel this and that. There are certain bits, how do you
:13:56. > :14:02.deal with the fact that he was a complete sod to his family. She has
:14:02. > :14:05.an elegant line about looking away from the events of 1858. She's not
:14:05. > :14:10.judgmental, she is short with things she doesn't care too much
:14:10. > :14:14.for, the things she doesn't think is important. I really felt that if
:14:14. > :14:19.anybody had got him right as a person and writer, it was her. I
:14:19. > :14:25.trusted her. If I only read one it would be that one. Jo there is a
:14:25. > :14:30.lovely irony, though, and I think - - There is a lovely irony, though,
:14:30. > :14:40.she has commented on in subsequent editions, the most incredible
:14:40. > :14:41.
:14:41. > :14:46.revelation in the book, a major encounter with Dotztoyevsqy, and
:14:46. > :14:54.Dickens says the nice characters are me as I wanted to be, and the
:14:54. > :14:57.evil characters are me. It turns out the letter was bogus. That is a
:14:57. > :15:02.biographer's nightmare? I loved the revenge, even with the most
:15:02. > :15:10.scruplous of the biographers, the fiction creeps in. With the
:15:10. > :15:13.Fairhurst scam becoming Dickens, a complete low -- Becoming Dickens, a
:15:13. > :15:19.completely different work, a stimulating idea, someone saying
:15:19. > :15:22.you think you know the Dickens' trajectory, we have been told it so
:15:22. > :15:25.many times, but there was jeopardy every moment of his life? It is not
:15:25. > :15:30.so completely different. You do think when you read it, this is a
:15:30. > :15:37.new idea of Dickens, young, lost, not really got anything. Losing the
:15:37. > :15:41.girl he desperately loves. But isn't that actually what is always
:15:41. > :15:46.behind him. That feeling of love and a grudge. What is good about
:15:46. > :15:49.the Callow is the rage he thinks is always inside Dickens. The
:15:49. > :15:56.theatricality is always, the showing off, there is always this
:15:56. > :16:01.lost and apprehensive boy. I think it actually fits. A lovely book,
:16:01. > :16:06.beautifully and subtley written. amazing book. It seems that many
:16:06. > :16:10.biographers are very God at saying on this day he or she -- good at
:16:10. > :16:13.saying on this day he or she did this and that. To show somebody in
:16:13. > :16:20.the process of becoming who they are is very, very difficult. It
:16:20. > :16:26.seems to me, weirdly, there is a precedent for this book, the book
:16:26. > :16:31.about Bob Dylan in the early years, he's one of a whole number of
:16:31. > :16:35.would-bes in the Greenwich village scene. Every time Dylan opens his
:16:35. > :16:39.mouth, it is obvious he will be the winner. This book is that
:16:39. > :16:44.precariousness of it, that if this had happened, and that had not
:16:44. > :16:48.happened. What it really does, it removes the whole sort of
:16:49. > :16:55.inevitability, it makes Dickens incredibly fresh and new. From the
:16:55. > :16:59.very point of if he hadn't been in Warren's Blacking House, if his
:16:59. > :17:04.father hadn't been in the debtors prison, he wouldn't have written
:17:04. > :17:13.and written again about children who are in desperate straits and
:17:13. > :17:17.who don't know what their future is. There is a great line, quoting GK
:17:17. > :17:23.Chesterton, that because children lack historical perspective, there
:17:24. > :17:28.is and lost child can suffer like a lost soul. You have the sense that
:17:28. > :17:33.Dickens is revisiting that endlessly, with Twist, David
:17:33. > :17:37.Copperfield. Don't you think it was why he was such a terrible husband,
:17:37. > :17:42.he didn't love Catherine. She loved someone else, she wouldn't have him.
:17:42. > :17:45.The girl he loved was Mary, the younger Hogarth sister, Catherine's
:17:45. > :17:49.sister. Callow interestingly suggests that he only really
:17:49. > :17:54.married Catherine, because it was arranged that Mary would be in the
:17:54. > :17:58.house with them. This worshiped being would be with them. Then we
:17:58. > :18:03.have Georgina, the younger interest sister, who takes over? He doesn't
:18:03. > :18:09.love her. The thing for me, I liked the idea you look at a couple of
:18:09. > :18:14.years of somebody's life before they were them. Is that news? We
:18:14. > :18:18.all stumble, bit by bit, writers are always mythologyising
:18:18. > :18:22.themselves, and asked how it happened, and coming up with a good
:18:22. > :18:27.tale. It seemed self-evident. The thing for the Tomalin, for me, was
:18:27. > :18:33.that a lot of people might have sat in a blacking factory, a lot of
:18:33. > :18:35.people might have had unrequieted love, and a lot of people feeling
:18:35. > :18:39.resentment against their mother in this particular case. What she for
:18:39. > :18:43.me does, is saying, yes, all those things could happen to any number
:18:43. > :18:47.of people, but there was something that was just a bit more great
:18:47. > :18:50.about him. That's what I think that biography says. It is more than
:18:50. > :18:54.just the sum of the parts. It is not just your experience, there has
:18:54. > :18:59.got to be that greatness in there. Finishing this particular
:18:59. > :19:03.conversation here with the slightly spongey coffee table Charles
:19:03. > :19:10.Dickens, with the inserts and everything else. That is inevitably
:19:10. > :19:18.what we will get in a centinary, do you think it is well done? I read
:19:19. > :19:23.it on my kindle. It is charming, it is lovely to see all the old
:19:23. > :19:30.theatre tickets and stubs. Some of the pull-outs are rather wonderful.
:19:30. > :19:37.There is a pull-out of Dickens' reading of Sykes and Nancy, with
:19:37. > :19:41.his an notetations, go loud and -- anotations, go loud and soft.
:19:41. > :19:46.will be hearing from Lucinda Dickens later in the programme.
:19:46. > :19:52.While the novels were adapted for the stage, even as he was writing
:19:52. > :19:56.them, the screen adaptations took longer. Let's look at cherished
:19:56. > :20:00.classics. Dickens' characters are ready-made for the screen, Heggity,
:20:01. > :20:06.and Uriah Heep, and Miss Havisham. For many the introduction to
:20:06. > :20:10.Dickens has not been on the page but on film. There is a Dickens
:20:10. > :20:14.season, featuring much-loved and rarely seen adaptations of the
:20:14. > :20:24.works. Including Roman Polanski's 2005 take on Oliver Twist, and
:20:24. > :20:32.almost 60 years later, David Lean's seminal Great Expectation. Who is
:20:32. > :20:37.it? Pip, come to play. Come nearer, let me look at you. There are more
:20:37. > :20:42.than 400 screen adaptations of Dickens' stories, since the
:20:42. > :20:47.earliest cinema, directors have been influenced by the way he
:20:47. > :20:51.juxtaposed his scenes. Dickens' juxtaposition of screens was
:20:51. > :20:56.minutatic, ready to film. We think that is interesting. Really by the
:20:56. > :21:00.30s, when you have big prestige Hollywood productions, MGM got
:21:00. > :21:05.their teeth into it, it was a box- office triumph in Hollywood. From
:21:05. > :21:14.Friday night serials to big-budget TV adaptations, Dickens has been TV
:21:14. > :21:18.gold. From the 1952 version of the Pickwick, to Ray Winstone and
:21:18. > :21:23.Gillian Anderson's star in Great Expectation on the BBC One last
:21:23. > :21:33.Christmas, and the BBC Two-parter of the unfinished story, The
:21:33. > :21:37.Mystery Of Edwin Drood. Thy will be done. No! Dickens, as
:21:37. > :21:45.we know, loved acting, he wanted to be an acting. He would have adored
:21:45. > :21:50.the values brought together in a big budget production. Dickens's
:21:50. > :21:59.acting was hampered for years, he would be tickled to become one
:21:59. > :22:03.finally, appearing the Muppets A Christmas Carol, and Doctor Who?
:22:03. > :22:08.Charles Dickens, the Charles Dickens, you are brilliant, you are
:22:08. > :22:13.brilliant. From the ridiculous to the sublime, his influence can be
:22:14. > :22:18.found in surprising places. Look at something like The Wire and the way
:22:18. > :22:24.it plays with episodeic structure that he was so good at that TV has
:22:24. > :22:30.picked up. It has all the standard Dickensian elements, abandoned
:22:30. > :22:34.urchins, flawed heros, villains and cheats, terrible social decay in
:22:34. > :22:39.Baltimore, social injustice. Please, Sir, I want some more. Can film and
:22:39. > :22:45.TV do justice to the intricate detail, multitude of characters and
:22:45. > :22:54.massive scale of Dickens' world, or is it inevitably a two-dimensional
:22:54. > :22:58.experience. Stella? Finns is that you?
:22:58. > :23:02.I don't know about you, I first came across Dickens as a ten-year-
:23:02. > :23:07.old watching an early adaptation of Great Expectation, when the books
:23:07. > :23:13.were still on the shelf. I didn't come in that way. Wrote in scenes,
:23:13. > :23:20.didn't he? Me too, I first saw, it was. Oliver, it was Great
:23:20. > :23:25.Expectation, with James Mason. That is my love. Wonderful Margaret Leig
:23:25. > :23:30.hton. A lot of us come to Dickens, in the first place, on screen. I
:23:30. > :23:34.think to answer the question in the film, we will talk about the film.
:23:34. > :23:38.But I think Callow is right, that Dickens belongs on stage not film.
:23:38. > :23:43.I think there is always something about the non-moving, breathing
:23:43. > :23:46.parts in front of you, which is slightly missing for me in film
:23:46. > :23:50.adaptations. The episode structure is amazing, he would have been a
:23:50. > :23:54.screen writer, there is no doubt at all. He has this epic imagination
:23:54. > :23:58.and brings everybody on, film can deliver that. But the breathing
:23:58. > :24:02.stuff, the living, breathing stuff I think he belongs on stage more.
:24:02. > :24:06.You can also say, where as many of his books were big and blousey, and
:24:06. > :24:10.had hundreds of characters, the whittling down and the editing
:24:10. > :24:14.makes some of his charactering stand out all the more. Miss
:24:14. > :24:20.Havisham is just one of the best characters you will come across in
:24:20. > :24:25.a book? It is funny, the attraction of Dickens, obviously, is he is so
:24:25. > :24:31.visual, he had the visual power, extremely, I think, Virginia Wolf
:24:31. > :24:35.said, that creates a problem, if you think of a problem like Wemick,
:24:35. > :24:40.in Great Expectation, his identifying physical identification,
:24:40. > :24:46.his Post Office mouth. When you can see in this way, it is what John
:24:46. > :24:51.emphasises in his work, the violin effigy, the thing of a post box
:24:51. > :24:56.walking around. With film you can't get the Post Office mouth. You just
:24:56. > :25:03.have a gob. You can't film metaphor, I thought Callow was quite right
:25:03. > :25:07.about that. In the book Miss Havisham, Pip says, he had once
:25:07. > :25:11.been taken to a ghastly waxwork at a fair, I had once been taken to
:25:11. > :25:18.one of the old churches where a skeleton and the ashes of a rich
:25:18. > :25:22.dress was dug out. Now, the skeleton and waxwork seemed to come
:25:22. > :25:27.together with dark eyes and move at me. How do you film that. Let's
:25:27. > :25:32.look at the particular lean lone moment when Pip comes to visit --
:25:32. > :25:37.Lean moment when Pip comes to visit Miss Havisham, for the second time.
:25:37. > :25:46.Do you know what that is there? can't guess what it is, mam? It is
:25:46. > :25:51.a great cake, a bride cake. Mine. On this day of the year, long
:25:52. > :26:01.before you were born, this heap of decay was brought here. It and I
:26:02. > :26:04.
:26:04. > :26:11.have worn away together. Mice have knawed at it. And sharper teeth
:26:11. > :26:17.than teeth of mice have g nawed at me. That is wonderful, but the
:26:17. > :26:21.horror you imagine for yourself, it is more vivid, what he does. It
:26:21. > :26:27.makes you realise how brilliant he is. In David Lean's Oliver Twist,
:26:27. > :26:32.some of it is better than Dickens. He leaves out the Rose plot, and
:26:32. > :26:36.the ending with the crowds, the flambo and Sykes falling off the
:26:36. > :26:40.roof, particular dick would have loved that, he would have liked it
:26:40. > :26:45.in film. -- Dickens would have loved that, he would have liked it
:26:45. > :26:53.in film. In Great Expectation when Pip goes to London, we have this
:26:53. > :26:59.strange Jimmy Clithero, John Mills looks 40. He is 40. I mean when he
:26:59. > :27:05.goes to London first of all, he's meant to be 20. Yeah imagine
:27:05. > :27:09.getting an actor more than 40 to play it is bonkers. Also curious,
:27:09. > :27:16.though I think the Lean films are terrific, nonetheless, curiously
:27:16. > :27:23.they have dated more than the books. Yeah, it is funny. Once John Mills
:27:23. > :27:30.hopes his mouth and speaks in a clearly upper-class accent. Back in
:27:30. > :27:34.the 1970s the Dickens didn't look so old fashioned, the fashion
:27:34. > :27:39.coincided, in The Mystery Of Edwin Drood drood, there is a lot of Pete
:27:39. > :27:43.-- drooddroddrod, there is a lot -- The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, there
:27:43. > :27:47.is a lot more fashion there. It came together. What happened in The
:27:47. > :27:53.Mystery Of Edwin Drood, he didn't finish it, so Gwnyeth Hughes, a
:27:53. > :27:59.brilliant screen writer picked it up and ran with it and finished it.
:27:59. > :28:04.It so outlandish? It was brilliant. You mustn't give the ending away in
:28:04. > :28:09.case people haven't watched it. It is 0 convoluted, just like Dickens,
:28:09. > :28:13.the ending like Oliver Twist, where everyone is related in ways you
:28:13. > :28:19.hadn't suspected. It is brilliant. The reincarnation, the thing about
:28:19. > :28:25.Dickens, he's so firmly rooted in the 19th century, the stories he's
:28:25. > :28:35.writing about. There has been modern adaptations,
:28:35. > :28:39.but can he do Shakespeare? With Shakespeare it is obligatory you
:28:39. > :28:44.modernise it. Dickens' characters, they are mythic figures in the same
:28:44. > :28:53.way Shakespeare's are. But he's the novelist of Victorian society. The
:28:53. > :28:59.great difficulty I think, is Dickens is writing in a new form. A
:28:59. > :29:03.pure modernist, Ruskin, said. He writing about a rapidly changing
:29:03. > :29:08.society, with amazingly changing innovations, what a film needs to
:29:08. > :29:13.do, you don't need to update it and set it in modern times. You have to
:29:13. > :29:20.make sure it doesn't look like some version of The Good Old Days. It
:29:20. > :29:28.has to look good. -- looking new. We have to make it stop looking
:29:28. > :29:34.like costume drama, easy for Wuthering Heights, with the Andrea
:29:34. > :29:40.an nold thing. There is only one Dickens adaptation I have seen on
:29:40. > :29:50.screen that does it, Alec Guinness's Little Dorrit dort. It
:29:50. > :29:53.is lovingly done, but doesn't look that way. Dickens' towering
:29:53. > :29:58.reputation as the greatest Victorian novelist has overshadowed
:29:58. > :30:01.many cop temp rees, in case you have had your -- contemporaries, in
:30:01. > :30:05.case you have had your fill, we have asked our panel for their
:30:05. > :30:10.suggestions. As Robert Douglas Fairhurst showed,
:30:10. > :30:16.many of Dickens' characters were inspired by people he met in real
:30:16. > :30:22.life. But given his complex and sometimes cruel relationship with
:30:22. > :30:32.women, would he have written such a smart and gutsy heroin as William
:30:32. > :30:33.
:30:33. > :30:37.Makepeace Thackeray's Becky Sharp. I wonder, might I. But it is not
:30:37. > :30:42.just women on the Major-General, Kate Mosse thinks it is time we
:30:42. > :30:46.remembered -- the page, Kate Mosse thinks it is time we remembered
:30:46. > :30:51.Charles Dickens' contemporaries. Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a
:30:51. > :30:59.popular writer of sensational novels, like Lady Audley's Secret,
:30:59. > :31:04.a murder and revenge plot set in high society. Is it time to
:31:04. > :31:10.reappraise Braddon's career. And Mary Aug hton wrote about women
:31:10. > :31:17.coming of age. She wrote wild supernatural fiction.
:31:17. > :31:23.Dickens is often lauded as a man of his time. But John Carey wants us
:31:23. > :31:28.to read works of Victorian novelists delving into the future.
:31:28. > :31:32.American writer and socialists Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward,
:31:33. > :31:37.looks ahead to the year 2000, and transports a young man from 19th
:31:37. > :31:44.century Boston to a 20th century utopia. Longstreet before man
:31:44. > :31:49.launched into face, in the First Men On The Moon, HG Wells
:31:49. > :31:53.chronicles a journey by a businessman and scientist, who
:31:53. > :31:56.discover a sophisticated civilisation of insects. They are
:31:56. > :31:59.giving us the fundamentals of life, food, they do understand. If you
:31:59. > :32:05.are looking for a contrast to the great English novelist, dire
:32:05. > :32:10.destroyer dire thinks you can do worse than turning to the trail
:32:10. > :32:18.blazing German novelist, Nitze, and his thoughts on cattle.
:32:18. > :32:22.There is nothing like philosophy. Tell me, Nizer? I'm not so brain
:32:23. > :32:26.addled that I'm under the impression he's a long lost
:32:26. > :32:35.Victorian novelist. There is the bit in the beginning of Great
:32:35. > :32:39.Expectation, when Pip will make take the meat pie and file to
:32:39. > :32:44.Magwitch. He sees this cattle and starts talking to them. It reminds
:32:44. > :32:47.me of this, "consider thele, grazing as they pass you buy, they
:32:47. > :32:51.do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they are
:32:51. > :32:57.fettered to the moment, and thus, neither melancholy or bored, this
:32:57. > :33:02.is a hard sight for man to see, for though he thinks himself better
:33:02. > :33:08.than the animals, because he is human, he cannot help envying them
:33:08. > :33:11.their happiness. What they have, a life neither bored or painful, is
:33:11. > :33:16.precisely what he wants. But he cannot have it because he refuses
:33:16. > :33:20.to be like an animal. A human being may well ask an animal, why do you
:33:20. > :33:24.not speak to me of our happiness but stand and gaze at me. The
:33:24. > :33:28.animal would like to answer and say, the reason is, I almost forget what
:33:28. > :33:32.I was going to say, but then he forgot this answer too and stayed
:33:32. > :33:38.silent so the human being was left wondering." It could be passage
:33:38. > :33:47.from a novel, but more modern. could be your tension that he read
:33:47. > :33:51.Great Expectation? I'm not going to go down that letter route. Dickens
:33:51. > :33:56.has not always been someone to be lauded. He has been loinised at the
:33:56. > :34:01.moment, but other Victorian novelists, particularly, you talk
:34:01. > :34:07.about Vanity Fair? Dickens was scorned by the intellectuals of the
:34:07. > :34:12.day. To a large he can tent. I think that van -- he can tent,
:34:12. > :34:17.Vanity Fair is an incredible novel in a way Dickens isn't, Dickens
:34:17. > :34:20.couldn't have done Becky Sharp. He couldn't depict the corrupt and
:34:20. > :34:24.sinister upper-class. He really didn't know about the upper-class.
:34:24. > :34:30.Thackeray did, he was a public school man, loved going to society
:34:30. > :34:34.dinners. Ruined him as a Noelist. But he knew what Lord Stain, was
:34:34. > :34:40.like. Dickens could never have painted such a figure. Is the other
:34:40. > :34:44.side of -- it is the other side of Victorian society, and a cynical
:34:44. > :34:48.view of society. Dickens loved people, Thackeray didn't. You look
:34:48. > :34:54.at neglected authors who were great sellers in their day, particularly
:34:54. > :34:58.women? I would, wouldn't I. I think there is a very important point
:34:58. > :35:07.here. This way of telling the history of who the great writers
:35:07. > :35:11.were. Tends to fix on one person. Exactly as you say, that he is the
:35:11. > :35:17.chronicler of Victorian England. What is wonderful about novel
:35:17. > :35:21.writing and reading is everyone was blooming well at it. Many writers
:35:21. > :35:25.were selling loads. As we still have those people who sell well
:35:25. > :35:30.looking down on those who don't. For me there were many women doing
:35:30. > :35:39.very, very well as novelists. erpls it of literary novelists,
:35:39. > :35:44.there was the Brontes. And George Eliot. You had Mrs Humphrey Ward.
:35:44. > :35:48.Mrs Gaskill, for me, I think, there is a plurality of voices in fiction,
:35:48. > :35:55.and that is always more honest and more true to what readers are doing.
:35:55. > :36:03.We should listen to the readers. Across the board, and lady
:36:03. > :36:10.AUDIENCE:'s secret, is it -- Lady Audley's Secret, is it a good
:36:10. > :36:16.novel? You say he looked at what happened to prostitutes and in the
:36:16. > :36:19.courts, and changed the times, you are looking at those looking to the
:36:19. > :36:24.future? Edward Bellamy founded a political party in America, people
:36:24. > :36:29.took him seriously. His idea was you abolish money, and issue a
:36:29. > :36:34.credit card, which represents an exactly equal share in the national
:36:34. > :36:39.surplus. You join the national army, it is a were, industrial army at 21,
:36:39. > :36:44.you retire at 45 and you get this in retirement or while working, an
:36:44. > :36:47.exact low equal share in the national product.
:36:47. > :36:51.-- exactly equal share in the national product. People took it
:36:51. > :37:00.seriously and thought that was the way. In Wells, he looks at a
:37:00. > :37:04.society that is a slave society. In The Man, children are surgically
:37:04. > :37:09.manipulated for their jobs, if you are going to be a scolar, you have
:37:10. > :37:13.hardly any body at all, just an enormous brain packed with the
:37:13. > :37:17.knowledge of libraries, and carried around in a tub like a shadowing
:37:17. > :37:22.jelly of knowledge. It is a dictatorship, the grand lunar, who
:37:22. > :37:27.rules the moon, one of the astronauts tried to explain to him
:37:27. > :37:31.what democracy is. This huge brain. It gets so hot trying to understand
:37:31. > :37:36.it, they had to spray it with water to keep it cool. Dickens was firmly
:37:36. > :37:41.rooted in his moment and time as a reformer. He didn't have the idea
:37:41. > :37:44.of looking to the future about when things would change. Yet he saw all
:37:44. > :37:48.the different changes in society? The changes chronicled, but one of
:37:48. > :37:52.the most important things about Dickens is, he put on the paiing
:37:52. > :37:57.people that were never put on the page -- page people that were never
:37:57. > :38:04.put on the page by other people. It was the forgotten people who were
:38:04. > :38:08.the heros. We talked a little earlier about the celebratory book
:38:08. > :38:12.by Dickens' great, great-grand daughter, Ethan Hawke. As he was
:38:12. > :38:15.preparing for his memorial service earlier this week, having donned,
:38:15. > :38:20.appropriately, a fabulously Dickensian hat, she took a moment
:38:20. > :38:29.to tell us about her favourite novels.
:38:30. > :38:34.John Forster's Room With A - EM Forster's A Room With A View I read
:38:34. > :38:44.when I was a teenager, it played me long to go to Italy. Every time I
:38:44. > :38:49.go there I think about the book. He writes lyrically and beautifully.
:38:49. > :38:55.This book and work was destroyed and had to be rewritten and
:38:55. > :38:58.reedited. It is fantastic, it is dark and uncomfortable book to read,
:38:58. > :39:02.you are laughing at things you shouldn't be. It is the most
:39:02. > :39:07.brilliant novel about oppression and the way people live underneath
:39:07. > :39:11.it. It is very funny and outlandish. The bok is about a mother and her
:39:11. > :39:15.children who go travelling to Morocco, I love it t it is written
:39:15. > :39:20.through the eyes of the older daughter, she's five years old.
:39:20. > :39:27.There is these wonderful phrases throughout, she's trying to work
:39:27. > :39:34.out what the words immediate, the reason it is called Hidious Kinky
:39:34. > :39:39.are the two words their -- the sisters love, they just say them
:39:40. > :39:44.outloud all the time. Think it is about Esther Freud's life being
:39:44. > :39:48.taken off by her parents. Being related to Dickens, I'm always
:39:48. > :39:53.asked which is my favourite, that is hard to answer. A Tale Of Two
:39:53. > :39:58.Cities is one of his least humourous novels, that doesn't mean
:39:58. > :40:01.it is not one of his best. It is one of only two historic novels he
:40:01. > :40:05.wrote. He wrote this about the French revolution, very influenced
:40:05. > :40:09.by his friend, Thomas Carlyle's historic book on the French
:40:09. > :40:16.revolution. You feel what it must have felt like to be in Paris at
:40:16. > :40:22.that time. It is just a wonderful description of a time when the
:40:22. > :40:27.world seems gone complete low mad. I have never got to the end of the
:40:27. > :40:30.bok without sobbing -- sobbing. I fall in love with the hero of the
:40:30. > :40:35.book, which is difficult because he's an alcoholic. We have this
:40:35. > :40:41.great canon of Dickens' books, a lot are not read, there are the
:40:41. > :40:45.main ones that are known. Do you think as a writer in 100 years
:40:45. > :40:53.there will be the same adoration? It will take 50 years of hangover
:40:53. > :40:58.to get over this incredible Dickens binge we have been having. It seems
:40:58. > :41:03.to me that the books that we are reading now, the ones that have
:41:03. > :41:07.dropped out of view, are going to remain out of view. Things like
:41:07. > :41:15.Bleak House, Little Dorrit, they will not look any worse 200 years
:41:15. > :41:18.from now than they do now. It is because he can make people laugh
:41:18. > :41:24.and cry. That is an enormous gift for a novelist, it is also because,
:41:24. > :41:30.as you said, he stands for the weak against the strong. That will live.
:41:30. > :41:34.When we were talking about the sheer size of some of these books,
:41:34. > :41:38.the detail, the lack of editing and so forth. Do people have the same
:41:38. > :41:42.patience for that. They will read lots of huge thrillers and so forth,
:41:42. > :41:46.will they drill down into all these characters of Dickens, do you think,
:41:46. > :41:52.and take the time to do so? have to learn to eat fast, haven't
:41:52. > :41:59.you. True, I think actually you put your finger on it, the reason, not
:41:59. > :42:03.us, obviously, 300 years times. Unless there is a miracle! Is that,
:42:03. > :42:07.in the end,'s not just the master of the story and the episodeic
:42:07. > :42:11.novel and the nature of that. But the nature of the characters. We
:42:11. > :42:19.are novelists, any novelist I know, to have one character that has
:42:19. > :42:24.stepped off the page into real life. He has loads. The Artful Dodger,
:42:24. > :42:32.Miss Havisham. Scrooge. That is why in 300 times, they live outside the
:42:32. > :42:40.books. Tell me your favourite Dickens' character? Estella, the
:42:40. > :42:50.most desirable woman in fiction. like Wemick, since all the Dickens'
:42:50. > :42:53.
:42:53. > :43:00.celebration have started, if my wife passes the slice of toast, I
:43:00. > :43:05.reply "thank-ye". Thank you to my guests tonight. For further
:43:05. > :43:10.information on everything we have discussed on tonight's show and a
:43:10. > :43:15.treasure trove of other clips, look at the website, you can get in
:43:15. > :43:18.touch via e-mail. Matter that will be here with guests to discuss the
:43:18. > :43:23.Lucian Freud exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London,
:43:23. > :43:27.a new book by Colm Tobin, and the work of Martin Scorsese. We are
:43:27. > :43:34.almost Dickens ed out, the Muppets returned to the screens today. On
:43:34. > :43:37.the wintry evening, here is their rousing rendition of Dickens'
:43:37. > :43:42.Christmas classic. # There goes Mr Heartless
:43:42. > :43:45.# There goes Mr Cruel # He never gives
:43:46. > :43:50.# He only takes # If meanness is a way of life
:43:50. > :43:53.# You practice and rehearse # All that work is paying off