Charles Dickens and Lancashire: author’s great-great-great-granddaughter talks heritage, Christmas, and Miriam Margolyes

A game of association. When Charles Dickens is mentioned, where does your mind go? To the misty London of the Artful Dodger and Nicholas Nickelby? To the wanderlust of The Pickwick Club, Miss Havisham's austere and crumbling manor house, or the candle-flicked edges of Ebenezer Scrooge’s parlour? To the best of times, the worst of times?
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Or to Lancashire’s dark satanic mills, its 19th century grime-soaked cobblestones, and its cityscapes of haze? To the rattle of cotton mills and labour in Preston which inspired the Coketown of Dickens’ Hard Times or Hoghton Tower, whose eerie dilapidation enticed the curious novelist as he passed, influencing his writing in George Silverman’s Explanation?

Dickens and Lancashire

Dickens’ ties to Lancashire are myriad. He visited Preston during the great ‘Lock Out’ of 1853, which saw the city’s cotton workers barred from their own factories, and delighted a packed-out Theatre Royal during a recital of Doctor Marigold and Mr Pickwick in 1867. Invigorated, he then walked the 12 miles to Blackburn the following day for his next show.

Miriam Margolyes with A Christmas Carol book by Charles Dickens at Gunnersbury Park MuseumMiriam Margolyes with A Christmas Carol book by Charles Dickens at Gunnersbury Park Museum
Miriam Margolyes with A Christmas Carol book by Charles Dickens at Gunnersbury Park Museum
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Whilst passing through Preston on the train in 1868, a zephyr from another locomotive tore his favourite sealskin cap from his head, casting it out the window and into the darkness. The Preston station master found it and, with his compliments, posted it to Liverpool, where a delighted Dickens retrieved it on the next leg of his tour.

But Dickens’ last visit to Lancashire was an inauspicious one. In the midst of his 75-town 1869 tour which yielded him more than £12,000 in earnings (equivalent to £1.3m these days), Dickens was beset by fits of dizziness and a loss of sensation in his left hand and foot ahead of his Preston show. He eventually collapsed, showing symptoms of a mild stroke.

Inspected by a doctor ahead of the sold-out show, he was told in no uncertain terms to rest and cancel. He was forced back to London, where he died the following year aged just 58.

The World Beyond A Christmas Carol

Miriam Margolyes in South West London with a group of Christmas carollers ahead of Channel 4's Miriam's Dickensian ChristmasMiriam Margolyes in South West London with a group of Christmas carollers ahead of Channel 4's Miriam's Dickensian Christmas
Miriam Margolyes in South West London with a group of Christmas carollers ahead of Channel 4's Miriam's Dickensian Christmas

At this time of year, Dickens discourse is dominated by the festive: namely, A Christmas Carol. And, amidst the national attention-swivel to all things holly, snow, and mistletoe, on December 20th at 9pm, Channel 4 will be playing host to Miriam Margolyes - herself a patron of the Charles Dickens Museum - for Miriam’s Dickensian Christmas.

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But, behind the scenes is where matters get really interesting. Working in tandem with her good friend Miriam on the programme was a certain Lucinda Hawksley. An award-winning author, art historian, travel writer, and lecturer, Lucinda also just happens to be the great-great-great granddaughter Charles Dickens himself.

“Working on the programme was so much fun, especially with Miriam,” says Lucinda, who’s previously appeared with her friend at the Malton Dickensian Festival. “But, of course because Miriam’s Jewish, she was like ‘why would I want to talk about Christmas?!’ so that’s where the premise came from, me wanting to share with her how much I love Christmas!

“I remember years ago giving her a Christmas card and her saying ‘I don’t celebrate Christmas!’,” adds Lucinda with a warm laugh. “So I have to make sure the cards I give her now say ‘Season’s Greetings!’”

Lucinda Hawksley at the Dickens MuseumLucinda Hawksley at the Dickens Museum
Lucinda Hawksley at the Dickens Museum

A Family Affair

Having written a number of biographies on Dickens and worked as a consultant on countless Dickens-related TV and radio shows as well as serving as a patron of the Charles Dickens Museum in London and the Norwegian Pickwick Club, the prominence of Lucinda’s family heritage in her working life is evident. But it wasn’t always that way.

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“There are very few writers in recent generations of my family,” she explains. “There are lots of actors, which is interesting because Dickens was himself a really keen actor, but I wanted to become a writer ever since I first read a book. It wasn’t necessarily because of Dickens, I just loved books and my father was a real bookworm, so we’d sit and read together.

“Once I’d found that passion, though, the literary heritage did spur me on, especially given that I found my family history and the Victorian age really fascinating,” she adds. “But I wasn’t reading Dickens when I was little and I didn’t even study him much at school, which I think is a good thing. People can often be put off authors when they have to study them.

Lucinda Hawksley and Miriam MargoylesLucinda Hawksley and Miriam Margoyles
Lucinda Hawksley and Miriam Margoyles

“Coming to Dickens as a scholar at university was really good,” continues Lucinda. “I had an amazing tutor who imbued a love of Dickens in me and I’m grateful for that because, while I knew about him growing up, I’d never had the canon forced down my throat. I came to Dickens because I loved reading rather than because I’d been told to read him.”

All Roads Lead to Charles

Having studied literature and art history at university, Lucinda went on to complete a Master’s in the latter. Unexpectedly, it was the academic avenue of art history rather than literature which led her inexorably back to Dickens.

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“One of the Victorian artists I wrote about in my Master’s was Kate Perugini, Charles and Katherine Dickens’ daughter,” explains Lucinda, who went on to curate an exhibition of the paintings of Kate Dickens-Perugini in 2002.. “She married an Italian and painted under her Italian surname and, through her, I really started to discover Dickens.

“To learn what he was like as a father and look at him through family eyes was just so interesting,” she adds. “I’d read about his impoverished childhood and his literary career, but writing a biography of Kate, who was a fascinating woman, allowed me to see him through a different lens. It was so intriguing and led to my fascination with him to grow.”

As well as a love of literature, there’s another thing which Lucinda shares with her great-great-great-grandfather, too: a love of travel. A famously curious and open-minded tourist, Dickens was also a huge walker, once ambling from London to Kent and often roaming the capital’s streets at night whilst grappling with insomnia.

Miriam Margolyes with A Christmas Carol book by Charles Dickens at Gunnersbury Park MuseumMiriam Margolyes with A Christmas Carol book by Charles Dickens at Gunnersbury Park Museum
Miriam Margolyes with A Christmas Carol book by Charles Dickens at Gunnersbury Park Museum

“Dickens was an explorer of everything - the mind and the world,” says Lucinda, who has also worked as a travel writer, visiting myriad cultural scenes ranging from the Galapagos Islands during an Ecuadorian coup to pumpkin festivals in Belgium. “I love how intrepid Dickens was, especially given the era.

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“When I read about the ships Victorian travellers had to get… I don’t think any of us would risk our lives on them today,” adds Lucinda, whose latest book is titled Dickens and Travel. “Just as I do, Dickens loved Italy, but when he travelled around the country he had to take pistols with him because there were bandits, highwaymen, and armed robbers everywhere.

“Working on Dickens and Travel was really fascinating, but I finished it off during the pandemic when none of us were allowed to travel, which was really quite frustrating because there I was writing about all these places I wished I could’ve visited! That armchair travelling was strange but it just shows that we share that desire to find out about new places.”

Christmas Concerns

And so, to Christmas. Reiterating how much fun she had whilst filming and working on Miriam’s Dickensian Christmas, Lucinda nevertheless hopes viewers take home a more sombre message as well.

“We wanted the programme to reflect what a difficult time for a lot of people this Christmas will be,” she says. “Sadly, it’ll be one of the closest Christmases to that which Dickens experienced in terms of poverty and hardship so, although it’ll be a great watch, I hope it makes people think about the less fortunate.

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“That’s what A Christmas Carol is all about - the crux is when Scrooge has a conversion and realises he has to help those less fortunate than himself,” she adds. “What Dickens is trying to tell us as readers is that we’re all a bit like Scrooge and that we can all do a bit more. That’s more relevant today than it ever has been throughout my lifetime.”