You're Dead to Me - Christmas with Charles Dickens

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Emily Bell and Mike Wozniak to find out what Christmas was like with Charles Dickens. We take a walk through the many Christmases of the renowned Victorian author. From elephants walking on ice to the family Christmas punch recipe, we take a closer look at the factors that may have influenced some of his most famous works and unpick what the phrase Dickensian has come to mean over the years.Written by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Researcher: Jessica White Project Management: Isla Matthews Audio Producer: Steve HankeyThe Athletic production for BBC Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. All day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And in the immortal words of Noddy Holder, it's Christmas. So we're back briefly to give you a one off seasonal stocking filler dedicated to Mr. Christmas himself, not Noddy Holder. No, the famous Victorian author Charles Dickens. And today we're going to be looking at how he celebrated Christmas throughout his life.

So it's not a conventional biography. This is a Christmas biography. We've invented a new genre of storytelling. And joining me on this jolly jaunt through Christmas' past are two very special guests. Ian History Corner. She's a lecturer in digital humanities at the University of Leeds, specialising in 19th century literature. She's the editor of the Dickensian,

the oldest academic journal in Dickens studies, and also edited the recent book Dickens After Dickens. It's Dr Emily Bell. Hi Emily, welcome to the podcast and your surname is actually quite Christmassy. Hooray! Hooray, yes, hello. I'm feeling appropriately festive and it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for coming. And in Comedy Corner, making a triumphant turn to the show, he's a comedian, actor, podcaster and globally renowned moustache ambassador. You'll have seen him in Taskmaster, Man Down, Horrible Histories and The Moonstone. And you'll have heard his dulcet tones on various hilarious podcasts, including my absolute fave podcast, Three Bean Salad. Check it out. You'll certainly remember him from our episode on the Neolithic settlement, Chateau Hoyuk.

It's Mike Wozniak. Welcome, Mike. Hello. Merry Christmas, one and all. Thank you very much. Lovely to have you back, Mike. Hello. Merry Christmas, one and all. Thank you very much. Lovely to have you back, Mike. Last time, we gallivanted through Stone Age Turkey together, but today, more of a Christmas Turkey vibe. Are you feeling Christmassy? Are you feeling Dickensian? I'm feeling very Christmassy. I think feeling Christmassy and feeling Dickensian,

they're sort of a parcel of each other, aren't they? A little bit, somehow. Everyone's sort of nobly strutting around town with their chins high up in the air, bellowing Merry Christmas, one and all, and holly and wreaths and all that kind of thing. The smell of savouries through kitchen windows, all that kind of thing. That's a lovely, warm vibe.

I'm glad you've gone with that. For me, because the word Dickensian in my head always means sort of poverty and squalor and children oh there's that as well yeah yeah oh mister please give me a penny so i'm glad you've gone for the sort of the end of the novel not the beginning of the novel good yeah very much so yeah i'll hold that thought because we will come back to that later so what do you know we start as ever with the the So What Do You Know? This is where I try and guess what our listener might know about today's subject.

And it's Charles Dickens. You know about Charles Dickens, mostly, don't you? Whether it's Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Miss Havisham or Scrooge McDuck. Sorry, Ebenezer Scrooge. They're both equally good. But in terms of Dickens and Christmas specifically, I'm guessing it is the novel or novella, a Christmas carol that you're going equally good. But in terms of Dickens and Christmas specifically, I'm guessing it is the novel or novella, A Christmas Carol that you're going to know.

It features the miserly Scrooge who gets ghosted in triplicate into changing his ways. It is the most famous Christmas story ever. Well, Nativity made the number one, but I think we're going for number two here. It's been adapted into countless theatre productions, TV dramas, radio broadcasts, graphic novels, ballets, operas, and not even counting the 30-plus films, which don't even include Elf, which I maintain is a Christmas Carol adaptation.

But what about the man himself, the big Chuck D? How did he experience Christmas in his lifetime? And how do you make a Charles Dickens Christmas cocktail that really packs a punch? Let's find out. Right then. Charles John Huff Charles Dickens Christmas cocktail that really packs a punch? Let's find out. Right then. Charles John Huffam Dickens, good name, was born on the 7th of February 1812 in which town, Mike? I think you know it quite well. He was born in Portsmouth.

I know that because I grew up in Portsmouth. He was. And that's a Portsmouth thing. It's one of those things a city attaches to itself. I mean, it's a bit like Liverpool and the Beatles, you know. Everyone feels that they own a bit of the glow. Is it just plaque everywhere? Yeah, and I think everyone, it's not like that was him that was,

it was that was us that was, we did that. We made a Dickens. What did you do, Southampton? Emily, why Portsmouth? What's the family situation? Are we talking big family? Are they comfortably well off? So Dickens has quite a big family, yeah. And it's a fairly poor family. They move around a lot. He's

born in Portsmouth, but they go to London, they go to Chatham. His dad was John Dickens, who was a payroll clerk in the Royal Navy. So they generally moved around port towns or places that the Navy was stationed. His mum was Elizabeth Dickens. He had an older sister whose name was Fanny and six younger siblings, although one of them died very young. Fanny was actually the talented one of the family when they were kids. She was a talented musician. And so, yeah, she was sent to the fancy Royal College of Music in London

and their parents prioritised her education, meaning that at certain points, Dickens' parents couldn't afford schooling for him. So she was the kind of shining star of the Dickens family. Oh, Mike. I didn't know that. Yeah, I've got a twin sister who's always been much brighter than me.

Better musician, definitely. Better company, wittier. She'd be a much better guest for this podcast, for example. Right. Have you got her number? Well, she's metres away from me right now. company uh whittier and she'd be a much better guest for this podcast for example right have you got her number well she i mean she's meters away from me right now but you know so i'm tempted to go and just drag her in so i can i can yeah and i know how that feels oh the one thing we didn't get we didn't get a difference of sort of financial pourings that's good parents didn't bankroll one and not the other that must have been rough yeah but i guess there are other siblings as well. So maybe all the money went into the one child who maybe had a future in the hope that

that kid could maybe provide for the family. As it turned out, it did work out just with the wrong kid. Okay, the first question I want to ask you, Mike, is how do you picture a Christmas scene 200 years ago when Charles Dickens is a little boy? This isn't a sort of Dickens, son of a clerk type family. Not necessarily wealthy by any means. No, and 1820s, so we're not talking classic Victoriana here. What do you imagine? I'm imagining probably whoever's earning in the house has saved up for quite a long time for a half-decent meal.

I've got a vague recollection somewhere that the baker's ovens would be used on a Christmas day is that a thing? Most people didn't have ovens and so there'd be a queue of people I don't know where I got this from but there'd be a queue of people around the baker's shops who weren't allowed to bake bread trying to shove their goose in or their duck

or their swan or whatever their blue tit, whatever they could possibly afford that the whole family would be gathering around to feast on. Yeah, that's certainly true for some of the poorer families in places like London. So lots of kind of street vendors. Dickens' family was not quite at that level, but differently true for a lot of Victorian. So they would have had an oven, would they?

He has remembrances. We get the older Dickens remembering back to his childhood. And his remembrances are of toys, Emily. He's slightly terrified of his toys. Yeah, absolutely. So we do know a bit about Charles's childhood Christmases, mostly from autobiographical elements in his later stories and journalism. So he writes about them in kind of interesting, funny ways. In the 1810s, Christmas was at the beginning of a kind of revival that it had in the 19th century, more of a working class holiday, it wasn't necessarily widely celebrated.

So we see in A Christmas Carol, for example, that Scrooge doesn't want to give Bob Cratchit the day off because that just wasn't necessarily part of the culture. So yeah, we know that Dickens had toys and he does describe some of them as quite terrifying. One toy had lobster eyes that bore down onto him. Another one was a cardboard man whose legs could be pulled up right around his neck, making him, in Dickens' words, ghastly and not a creature to be alone with.

Poor Dickens, stuck in a room with a self-garotting man. And there was a jumping frog he talks about, which freaked him out because he didn't know where it was going to land. But you can kind of tell he's exaggerating some of this. On a lighter note, he went to see the famous clown Grimaldi in a pantomime at Covent Garden Theatre in 1820, one of the first pantomimes, and it was something that made him want to be an actor as well. Yeah, young Charles Dickens wanted to be an actor for most of his early life.

But the most important question here is, Mike, have you ever been traumatised by your childhood toys? Ooh. I was traumatised by my childhood wardrobe. The way the wood was cut, there was a very sort of ghoulish kind of Edvard Munchian type face in the door that sort of faced me every night

and it would sort of catch the moonlight off the window through the curtains and I didn't get a lot of sleep as a small child by any means. But toys, it's only so scary Playmobil can be, really. Charles Dickens' childhood was not full of deprivation. He had toys, even if they were harrowing and scary. And also in the immortal words of the song, baby, it was cold outside

because we're talking here about a mini ice age. Charles Dickens, the boy, lives through this sort of tiny little climactic blip, Emily, doesn't he? Yeah, absolutely. So his first eight Christmases were white Christmases. It was the coldest decade since the 1690s. So there's no likely left an impression on him as lots of his Christmas stories later include that kind of extremely cold weather that we wish that we would get now, that snowy Christmas. So Dickens may be part of the reason that our idealised Christmas is snowy. And it was so icy during Dickens's early years that the River Thames froze in February of

1814 and London celebrated its final Thames Frost Fair that year. So what they would do is roll out tents and vendors onto the ice, do drinking, dancing, bowling, and there was even an elephant being led across the river just below Black Friars Bridge. An elephant walking on ice, Mike. Imagine the insurance forms you have to fill in for that, the health and safety risk assessment. They must have had a moment where they thought this is probably not going to be worth it. Surely, lads, come on. Did they try anything before the elephant?

Or did they just go straight to African daddy elephant and away we go? It's a bit of a gambit, isn't it? It's like, we know this is just frozen water, so let's get the heaviest thing we can find in the zoo. And was it just the success that was documented or were there failures as well that didn't get written down? I mean, there might be a whole heap of elephant skeletons at the bottom of the Thames to this day. What else do we know about little Charlie's early years, Emily?

They leave Portsmouth and go where? They moved to Chatham in the early 1820s and they're still struggling with money. In 1823, things get worse and they move to Gower Street in London. And just before Christmas, Dickens' father, John, is arrested and sent to Marshallsea debtors prison. And this was a really traumatising part of young Charles's life because he was sent to work in Warren's Blacking warehouse. And this is kind of when his education came to an end and he felt like all of his prospects came to an end. And Warren's Blacking was a shoe polish factory and he was earning six shillings

a week he had to stay with another family while his dad his mum and his siblings were all living in marshall c debtors prison but it was in the factory actually that he met a young man called bob fagan and you can see the seeds of his novels coming out of this early experience yeah it's ringing some christmas bells i hope mike bob fagan it bit, yeah. I think I did know that his dad ended up in a debtor's jail. I didn't realise his whole family did. Yeah, he was sent out to go earn a wage. So little 12-year-old Charlie, is he 12 at this point, Emily? Yeah, give or take. There's some debate about exactly when it started

because we only know about it from what Dickens said later and his memory. And it was clearly, it loomed large in his mind as an incident. But he is a little boy going out to earn a wage because his family are in debtors' jail. It's quite a weight on the shoulders. This is in December, so this would be Christmas. This would be his first Christmas as an earning man, aged 12 or so. So pretty daunting. But I'm going to race through the next highlights of Charles' life

because that's not really what we're doing here today. We're doing his Christmas life. So some highlights for you, Mike. Charles does get a brief education. He goes to a nice school. He gets a job as a legal clerk, age 15. He absolutely hates it. He then becomes a talented parliamentary stenographer.

So he's renowned for being able to write what politicians have said in parliament. Copperfield style. Exactly that. And he mastered it in three months when it normally took three years to learn the shorthand. So he's a very smart kid. And at this point, he decides he's not going to be an actor anymore he's going to be a writer and his first bit of writing is called a dinner at popular walk we all know it well tumbleweed and it's 1833 is that a novel what is that a short story what is what is that it's

sort of straddling short story and sketch it It's a kind of comic piece of writing. Is that a sort of Boz era type sketch or something? Well identified, Mike. So tell us about the Boz era then. All I understood was when he first started writing, he wrote sketches under this alias of Boz. I assume because he was doing sort of parliamentary work on the side and therefore wanted to be a bit anonymous and was being a bit satirical and witty and what have you.

Yeah. I've never read a single one of them, I have to admit. I've never read a Boz. I'm Boz ignorant. Probably read most of his novels in my time, but I don't know the Bozes. Emily, tell us about Sketches by Boz. So, I mean, well, the first thing to say, I think,

is the nickname of Boz and where it comes from because it's a story that makes so little sense. There's a character called Moses from a novel by Oliver Goldsmith. Dickens's younger brother was called this as a nickname. Then it got shortened to Boz pronounced through the nose apparently as Bozes which somehow turns into Boz and then somehow gets attached to Dickens. So I've never really understood the genesis of that story and some people insist on saying it's Bo it's but no come on it's boz so yeah the sketches are inspired by 18th century satirical writing and they're kind of comic views into life he does

kind of sketches of young ladies and young gentlemen deals with romance and and they're not really what you think of dickens in terms of the gritty social reform he's trying out what it means to be a writer in the vein of the stuff that he loved to read as a kid and there's a christmas entry isn't there 1835 i think think he has a little Christmas festivities article. It's about eating turkey and presents and Christmas pudding and storytelling and speeches. He also then gets married the following year to Catherine Hogarth. Mike, if we were going to retool Sketches by Boz as Sketches by Woz, i.e. Mike Wozniak, tell us the stories, the comic vignettes that you're going to regale us with.

I'd probably have to throw in my indestructible Polish grandfather until he was destructible. It comes to us all. Sure. And before he shuffled off, he was indestructible. And there was one Christmas, I think when I was very, very little, he was fixing the tiles on the roof of his own house. In his 70s, I think my mother was in the bathroom at the sink

and just noticed the shape suddenly falling past the window oh no and there being a sort of thud on the ground and just had a sort of oh no how do i explain to my children that sort of wet splat on the ground outside is is their grandfather and she sort of went outside to see what condition he might be and he was just dusting himself off and just was quite surprised to see my mother looking concerned. Is everything alright? Nothing to worry about. Which was kind of his catchphrase. Wow.

For some reason that's the first thing that comes to my mind, really, is the indestructible Stanislav Wozniak. That story ended very differently than I thought it was going to. Yeah, thank goodness, right? Goodness me, so Sketches by Woz is a Christmas miracle. Astonishing. That's a high bar to set, Mike. Thank you very much.

So 1836, Charles Dickens is newly wedded to Catherine Hogarth. She's now Catherine Dickens. And he's even cranked out his debut novel, which is, Mike, do you know? The Pickwick Papers. It is Pickwick, The Pickwick Papers. It's a series of jolly travel adventures starring Samuel Pickwick, a posh chap who presides over a little Pickwick club. It's a big old fun romp. It's a huge seller.

It, I think, shifts 400,000 copies. It inspires merch. Cigars, hats, canes and soaps. Merch? Really? Merch. Yeah, yeah. So, Emily, Dickens has had a smash hit on his first try. So what's his next project and is it a Merry Christmas for him in 1836-37? And is it a Merry Christmas for him in 1836,

1837? So we have a December opera in 1836. The Village Coquettes opens at St. James's Theatre with The Strange Gentleman on the same bill. But that closes after only 19 performances. And I can't really recommend it. The Village Coquettes? The Village Coquettes, yeah. I've never heard of it. I've read a lot about Dickens. I've never heard of it.

Did he write the music for it as well? No, someone called John Huller wrote the music for it. And Dickens collaborated with him. And he did do a few theatrical pieces. They never went down very well. One woman had a manuscript of one and he traded her a better manuscript because he didn't want her to have it. He was quite embarrassed about his early theatrical stuff.

Okay, so it's good to know that even the greats have flops. But we also have a lovely letter from 1836 that gives us an insight into Charles Dickens's Christmas Day. He writes to his friend Thomas Beard, My dear Beard, we propose giving the turkey until four tomorrow in order that he may be well done. Be punctual and don't place too much reliance on our excellent friend Warburton. I arrived home at one o'clock this morning dead drunk and was put to bed by my loving missus. We're just going to Chapman's sister's quadrille party, a type of dance for which you may imagine I feel remarkably disposed.

So he's a party animal, Mike. He's turning up 1am drunk and he's off to a party next day. So he's living life to the full. I want to know about Warburton as well. Like if he's, Dickens is getting on it, but he doesn't think that Warburton's necessary to be trusted. What's Warburton up to? Yes. So this is him as a young man. But in 1837, Charles and Catherine have their first child, little Charlie Dickens.

The first of, do you know how many children they have? I'm going to say five. I don't know. Double it. No, ten? It's ten yeah. Chucky D his quiver was full and he didn't care who knew it. So ten children does that mean the Christmases get progressively less rowdy? Not at all yeah the Dickens family go hard and we have things like the inventory of the wine in his cellar. He liked his wine.

Just to be confusing, he named his first child Charles. Charlie was born on Twelfth Night, so they always had a big party around that time. One letter by Dickens says, The actuary of the national debt couldn't calculate the number of children who were coming here on Twelfth Night in honour of Charlie's birthday. We know a lot about the Dickens family Christmas through his daughter Mary, who was called Mamie, and names in Dickens are really fun, the nicknames they had. One of his younger children was called Plawn, short for Plawnish Maroon-tagoonta. But Mamie, which is a fairly normal nickname, wrote a personal memoir called My Father As I Recall Him, with the help of her aunt Georgina Hogarth. Christmas was always a time in which our home was looked forward to with eagerness and delight and to my father it

was a time dearer than any other part of the year I think. She also tells us that he would desert work for a week which was a big deal for Dickens who just chronically overworked at all times and he would perform magic tricks, do musical and theatrical performances with his kids and his family and friends, spend weeks learning dances for Christmas and take the kids to a toy shop in Hoburn on Christmas Eve. And as well as filling their home at Gad's Hill with guests, they kept a cottage in the village reserved for the use of the bachelor members of the holiday. It's like a sort of Airbnb, but for bachelors. It's great.

It's, you know, sort of get all the single lads Put them in the cottage in the village And then they can come over, away from the kids This memoir by Mamie Remembers her father as an incredibly gregarious Warm, genial, sociable Life of the party kind of guy We know Dickens was a bit more complicated than that

But that's how she wanted people to remember him But, I mean, Mike, in terms of your Christmases You're a dad, children running around, song and dance, theatre, magic tricks. Are you the life and soul of the party or are you hiding in the corner? The kids are crucial, right? That's the whole point in our household.

It's not a massive family, but there will be four. There'll be mine and my sister's children. There's four children, a couple of dogs. That's plenty, right? The idea of ten children, particularly if he's bringing in guests and bachelors we don't invite any bachelors to our christmas that's where i draw the line i happily get a few more kids and absolutely some friends can come in but it's a zero bachelor situation

that's too high risk all that booze swelling around all that gravy it's a mess yeah dickens then has another big hit. It's a novel by the name of Oliver Twist in 1838. Then you get Nicholas Nickleby, followed by The Old Curiosity Shop in 1840. So it's going quite well. Then he has his first historical novel, Barnaby Rudge. Not going so well at that point. No one has read in 1841.

And then he's off to America. This is the first of Dickens' famous tours of the States, 1842. And does he have a nice time stateside, Emily? In my head, he's sort of accidentally abandoned in his hotel room like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone and has to fight off burglars. That's what I'm hoping for. Is that what happens? Well, in a way, yeah, he has to fend off. Not quite in his hotel room, but he does have to fend off fans. So the 1840s is when he's really starting to get famous.

have to fend off fans. So the 1840s is when he's really starting to get famous. Georgina, Catherine's younger sister, moves into his house to help with running the household while Charles and Catherine go to America. And while he's there, actually, they throw him a big boss ball in New York, where the crowd consumed, among other things, 50 hams, 50 tongues, 28,000 stewed oysters, 10,000 pickled oysters, 4,000 candy kisses and 6,000 candy mottos. And in a letter to a friend, he writes, I can do nothing that I want to do, go nowhere where I want to go and see nothing that I want to see. If I turn into the street, I'm followed by a multitude. Wow. Oh, that sounds like a real burden, actually. So he's properly, properly famous in the States,

and he is besieged and mobbed. Clearly, he's a star. Catherine is pregnant with their fifth child by this point. He needs a big hit to pay the bills. And so in 1843, he scribbles a little novella. And it is called, Mike? Is this Christmas Carol time, is it? It is a Christmas Carol. And Emily, after a bumpy old childhood where he is in the blacking factory, he's not just scared of falling back into poverty himself.

He has a social conscience. Absolutely. Dickens is very interested in the poor and the plight of the poor. He visited Cornish tin mines earlier in that year, where he saw children labouring in terrible conditions. He'd also visited Field Lane Ragged School, which was a school for poorer children and street children. The same year, a parliamentary report of the Children's Employment Commission had revealed many of the horrifying realities of industrialisation.

Dickens actually considered writing a pamphlet in response to that, and thank God he didn't. A Christmas pamphlet. A Christmas pamphlet about the plight of the poor. But he decided that fiction could be more powerful. So in a letter, he spoke about writing A Christmas Carol, and he says, I wept and laughed and wept again and excited myself in a most extraordinary manner in the composition. And thinking whereof, I walked about the black streets of London, 15 and 20 miles, many a night, when all of the sober folks had gone to bed. Dickens's difficult upbringing and

his mixed class background meant he engaged with social issues in a very personally informed way. So this social commentary was rare and impactful. And again, thank God it was in fiction and not in a pamphlet. No, the Muppets Christmas pamphlet doesn't really have the same ring to it, does it? I love A Christmas Carol, Mike, because I think it does two things extremely well. It's quite spooky. It's also really funny. And that's very hard to pull off. Well, simply, he's always funny, isn't he, Dickens?

They're genuinely terrifying ghosts, aren't they? The way the first one is described, the Ghost of Christmas Past, it shifts in its shape, doesn't it, as well? At some point, it's got quite a few legs or appears to have many legs or it sounds like it's right up in his face, but it actually looks like it's miles away

and then it's the other way around. And it's all quite freaky, really. And yet it's taking him back to it's the other way around. And it's all quite freaky, really. And yet it's taking him back to moments of his bucolic childhood. There's moments of idyll when things are going right and things are going wrong. But he's able to make these choices and makes the wrong choices. Christmas Present looks avuncular and is dressed in green. I think he's got a nice big hairy chest and he can squeeze into all kinds of different spaces

and he's very cheerful about it. But he keeps throwing Scrooge's own words back at him. So he sort of abounds with cheerfulness and yet suddenly will turn... It's this laser-directed savagery that he turns on Scrooge. So it'll be this lovely scene full of chestnuts and wreaths of sausages and all of a sudden there's, Whoa! All right, chill out, mate.

It's great. Yeah yeah it's fearsome stuff and the social commentary is really interesting because it's a book that has a very strong moral angle to it and it comes at this sort of very interesting time we did a previous episode about the victorian christmas and indeed to quote the song it's beginning to look a lot like christmas at this very particular moment in the 1840s we get crackers christmas trees stockings cards they all arrive at this point and And so A Christmas Carol is both reflecting this sudden upsurge in interest in Christmas, and it's driving that interest. A Christmas Carol is a huge catalyst for getting people more into Christmas and getting into that charity element as well. What's called sometimes Christian socialism, this notion of what you owe

to your neighbours. So it's a really powerful book. Is it a big success commercially, Emily? Yeah, it's an absolutely enormous success. And you've got to bear in mind as well, he wrote it in six weeks to have it published in time for Christmas. Oh, don't tell me that. Yeah, Dickens' productivity is terrifying. He missed deadlines once in his entire life. Cannot relate. So it's published on the 19th of December and it's sold out by Christmas Eve. And that's 6,000 copies. Dickens spent his own money making it a beautiful book as well.

It had colour illustrations by John Leach. It was red-brown cloth embossed with gold, green endpapers, title page decorated in red and green. So it sold out, but Dickens only got £230 when he expected £1,000 from it because he didn't realise how much he was paying for the production. It sold for five shillings, so it was too expensive for the working class, but it wasn't really aimed at them. As Greg says, it was about encouraging that kind of Christian charity. But it was hugely successful.

And by the end of 1844, so a year later, there had been 13 editions and Dickens would later perform it on stage 127 times. He also ended up suing a rival knockoff publisher that printed a two penny version but they filed for bankruptcy so he ended up having to pay for that as well so it wasn't quite the money maker he wanted it to be but it did solidify that kind of the man who invented Christmas vibe for Dickens. And having found his Christmas golden goose, he realises, hang on a minute, I'm the Christmas novelist guy. But obviously listeners to this podcast will probably not know any other Dickens Christmas stories, but there are some. So we'll start in 1844 with The Chimes. What's it about, Emily?

Dickens said he wanted his next Christmas book to be a great blow for the poor, something powerful. Christmas book to be a great blow for the poor, something powerful. But he says, I want to be tender to and cheerful as like the carol in that respect as may be and as unlike it as such a thing can be. So it follows Trotty Vec, which is another great Dickensian name, I think. Trotty Vec. Trotty Vec, an elderly porter who follows the bells of a church as he thinks they're speaking to him. He discovers the spirits of the bells and their goblin attendants who reprimand him for losing faith in man's destiny to improve. He's told that actually he fell from the tower during his climb and he's now dead.

Some vibes of Mike's granddad here. And his daughter Meg's subsequent life must now be his lesson. And she has a terrible life. But at the end of the book, Trotty finds himself awakening at home as if from a dream as the bells ring in the new year. So it's very, it's a wonderful life in that way.

So still time, another last chance, basically. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a Christmas carol with goblins. It's the same book again, but this time, what if I put some goblins in it? I do remember reading one that had goblins that was about a grave digger I seem to remember. They do a similar thing to

him with Scrooge and they tell him he's a terrible bloke and they take him to a cavern and sort of rough him up a bit and it seems like it's going to be, like he's learnt the lesson of his ways, he's another sort of miserly, scowly misanthropist but then I think at the end of it he just wanders off, he sort of disappears

and everyone in the town thinks he was taken away by the goblins. Unless that was a dream, of course. So Mike's absolutely right. There's an earlier Christmas story. Oh. Yeah, from the Pickwick Papers called The Goblins Who Stole the Sexton. So he likes the goblins. And he's been thinking about these Christmas stories for a while.

So that's where it's from. OK, fine. Impressive Dickens knowledge there. So I've read that many, many, many a year ago and it's got confused in my memory and far from the wrong place. OK. It's all reassuring that I haven't just

completely invented some goblin stuff. So we've had the chimes and now we move on to the next story for the following year, 1845. It's called The Cricket on the Half. Nothing to do with the sport of cricket. And it stars another brilliantly named character called John Peerybingle

he does love his characters doesn't he Dickens he does love a silly name so John Peerybingle is a carrier who lives with his young wife Dot their baby boy and their nanny Tilly Slowboy I mean perfect name for a rapper Tilly Slowboy what happens in the cricket in the half Emily

who is the cricket? Is it Jiminy Cricket type cricket? Like a little conscience cricket? Tell us. It's kind of. So it features a cricket who chirps on the hearth and acts as a kind of guardian angel to the family. One day, a mysterious elderly stranger comes to visit the Pearybingles, and their life intersects with Caleb Plummer, a poor toy maker employed by the miserly Mr. Tackleton, who's about to marry the sweetheart of Edward, Caleb'summer, a poor toy maker employed by the miserly Mr. Tackleton, who's about to marry the sweetheart of Edward, Caleb's son, who is presumed dead. So there's lots of intrigue there. I'm not going to spoil all the details, but scandal, intrigue,

and obviously a miserly heart melted by appropriate festive cheer. I don't know about you, Mike, but it sounds like a Christmas carol with added Pinocchio elements. There's a toy maker. Why not? Yeah. If you've got a good idea, just run Pinocchio elements. There's a toy maker. Why not? Yeah. If you've got a good idea, just run with it. A bit more razzmatazz. Yeah.

Broaden the appeal. It's not a sequel. It's just, yeah, same thing with a bit of jazzle. Exactly. Let's go. Give the people what they want. The names are amazing, aren't they? Yeah.

There needs to be a process by which you can work out what your Dickensian name should be. I did find a generator once, and it came up with Busty Frumpy Bert, which has gone to be one of my favourite non-Dickensian names. It needs to be something everyone can do, yeah. Producer Steve has sent me a little message here saying that on the Dickensian name generator, my name would be Nobby Coxler. Very good.

And Mike, yours would be nobby coxler very good very good and mike's yours would be doddy catty doddy catty oh daddy sounds quite sweet sounds like a sort of sort of nursemaid type figure much loved and cherished yeah end us into poverty marries late in life that kind of thing yeah i think i think doddy catty is a rather warm-hearted character yeah feels like a peggotty type it scoops up little birds they're abandoned in nests and sort of nurses them back to health and lets them fly again. Also eats worms and feeds them worms directly from his or her mouth. Let's move on then from The Cricket on the Hearth, which is quite successful and is quite a big theatrical success, isn't it, Emily? Yeah, so although we don't really read it today, it was much more successful than The Chimes and it quickly went through two editions and had huge theatrical success with 17 different theatres in London during the Christmas period of 1845 putting it on. Dickens sometimes found plays of his work difficult to watch, once being so embarrassed by a production of Oliver Twist that he lay down on the floor of his box in the middle of the first act and stayed there until the end of the play.

the floor of his box in the middle of the first act and stayed there until the end of the play but he also had a very nifty marketing trick for this one where he gave his friend the playwright albert smith the cricket on the hearth in advance so that the theatrical version could open on the same day that it was published oh nice brand synergy so it's like when you get the audiobook and the hardback released on the same day you could go see the play of the novel you've just bought. That's very nice. So this is basically Dickens in his sort of Spice Girl era, where he's getting Christmas number one year after year. He's making hay, isn't he?

He is. He's racking up the Christmas hits. And then you get Dombey and Son. And then you get his next Christmas book in 1846 called The Battle of Life. I've never heard of it, to be honest. Mike, what's the plot of The Battle of Life? It doesn't even sound very Dickensian either, does it? It doesn't really. It sounds like a sort of Powell and Pressburger movie, doesn't it?

Or a very, very, very dodgy soap opera that lasted for six episodes. Emily, what's The Battle of Life? Because I'll be honest, I've read some Dickens. I don't know this story at all. Yeah, it's interesting you say it's not very Dickensian because this is the only one with no supernatural elements in it. So the protagonist is Dr. Jedler and he finds life a joke and thinks human cares and issues are trivial. But he does have a change of heart because of his two daughters who hide their love for their mutual friend Alfred so that the other can have him. Dickens was actually quite disappointed with this book and he regretted not including supernatural

elements into it. So he reworks some of the idea in A Tale of Two Cities. In terms of the theatrical side, Albert Smith again opens a dramatisation on publication day and it's internationally adapted as well. So it appears in New York and Dublin. And the plays in this case were actually more successful than the book. Fair enough. I have to ask, you mentioned there that the Battle of Life doesn't have the supernatural elements. We really associate Dickens with those kind of ghostly moral lessons. I think what scholars would call hierophany, the idea of the sacred appearing and saying, you must be better. Is this a new technique he's pioneered? Is he borrowing someone else's tradition? You know, why ghosts and goblins in his Christmas stories? Yeah, it's a good question. And his friend John Forster wrote that Dickens had

a secret delight in giving old nursery stories and fairy tales a higher form. And through his work, you can see him moving throughout his career from comic 18th century influence style to more of an interest in social reform, bringing older genres together with that purpose. So Christmas ghost stories are probably a very old tradition. An interest rose in response to industrialization, the rise of science, new technologies. Early photography might capture accidental ghostly images of blurry double exposures. And the telegraph machine got people thinking about messages being tapped out seance style. So there's a nice meeting of kind of modern issues and old forms in an era of mesmerism, which Dickens was really interested in, spiritualism, ghost hunting.

Some scholars have even suggested that leaking gas lamps as kind of part of the Victorian city meant people were hallucinating more due to carbon monoxide poisoning. So lots of possible issues that make people more interested in ghosts. Mike, where do we stand on the carbon monoxide poisoning good for literature debate? Sounds like it was more than worth it, I'd say. Absolutely poison those Victorians

so we get some great ideas and some absolutely great novels. Thanks, everybody. Dickens does not write a christmas book in 1847 he's too busy but he does lament it saying i was loath to lose the money and still more so to leave any gap at christmas firesides which i ought to fill so he's a real romantic when it comes to christmas he's now identified that this is his chief money spinner and he's thinking oh i've missed out on some free cash there but we do do have from 1847, not a Christmas story,

but we do have a Dickens punch recipe for Christmas party. Mike, you are a renowned voiceover artist. Would you like to give us your finest Nigella voice for this Christmas recipe for punch? Peel into a very common basin, which may be broken in case of accident without damage to the owner's piece or pocket, the rinds of three lemons cut very thin.

Add a double handful of lump sugar, a good measure, a pint of good old rum, and a large wine glass of good old brandy. If it not be a large claret glass, say two. Set this on fire. Let it burn three or four minutes at least, stirring it from time to time. Then extinguish it. Squeeze in the juice of the three lemons and add a quart of boiling water. Stir the whole well, cover it up for five minutes and stir again. Lovely, beautifully done, Mike. I mean, I'm a teetotaler, but I feel

like I want to drink this. I have drunk this. Have you? Oh, really? Is there any good? I don't remember very much about subsequent events. It is goods. But it's surprisingly drinkable, yeah. Yeah. There's another one, another punch called Nagus, that shows up a lot in Dickens' novels. It was very, very boozy. It was named after a famous soldier of the 18th century. It's very orangey.

It's very fruity flavour. And the Victorians would give it to kids. So at Christmas parties, Dickens' kids are almost certainly drinking quite boozy punch. It's like this standard, come on kids, drink your eggers. So slightly alarming, but there we go. Let's move away from the boozy stuff, back towards the literature. 1848, the year of revolutions in Europe. But for Dickens, it's another Christmas book.

This one is called The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain. It's a bit more spooky again. I'm going to say it, Mike. It sure does sound a lot like Christmas Carol. Well, if it ain't broke, right? Emily, what's the plot? So it's a bit different. It's about an unhappy chemistry professor called

Redlaw who's haunted by his own ghostly double. Not that different. The ghost says he can take away Redlaw's painful memories and he accepts. But instead of feeling happy, he feels sad and angry, but doesn't know why. So we have the nice moral lesson that pain serves a purpose as it allows us to forgive and grow as people. And Redlaw understands this and becomes a happier, kinder and more humble person. So this isn't a story that Dickens ever performed. But again, it was a theatrical success. And when it was performed on stage that year, he insisted that the ghost

be represented by the lights being dimmed on the stage rather than having a person play the ghost. Yeah. This is a big deal in theatre history, Mike. I mean, you are a thespian. Sure. One of the greats, I would say. And in 1862, we get the haunted man and the ghost bargain on stage with a brand new technology called Pepper's Ghost. Do you know what Pepper's Ghost is? Have you ever heard of it?

I've no idea what Pepper's Ghost is, no. Oh, good. Okay, fun. So Pepper's Ghost is a technique still used today. It is how you put a spooky apparition on the stage. You have a performer under the stage or under the audience, and they are illuminated brightly. Their reflection is shone through an angled pane of glass

on the front of the stage, above them, and it makes them look like they're on the stage, even though they're below the stage. So this is the first mainstream use of Pepper's Ghost technology. It's a huge deal all the newspapers rave about it everyone flocks to go and see the play it's a brand new way of doing spooky stuff on stage and it's dickens at the heart of it i mean there's another gimmick that dickens is doing here emily is that he's he's got a little sort of story structure a little running

gag almost yeah so the christmas books generally have a chapter title gimmick. So the carol is in staves like an actual Christmas carol. The chimes is in quarters like the peals of the bell. The cricket on the hearth is in chirps. And I love that a periodical around the time paradised him as writing the flight of the ladybird in seven wings because he becomes so well known for this kind of gimmicky chapter structure. He's always got a little joke happening. Chirps, chimes, quarters, was it?

That's quite nice. Mike, what would you use if you were going to splice up your vignettes, your sketches of Woz? What's the running joke you could go for? Shattered roof tiles, possibly. And you could chop those out and you'd have a little jigsaw for the whole family to do by the end it would all it would work lovely put all the pieces together to a single tile oh

that's very nice yes absolutely i can see the merch happening right now so in 1849 we get david copperfield this was meant to be an autobiography it was meant to be his story the the initials are reversed so d c swap them over cd charles dickens this is the story of a young boy who has hardships and you know comes to success but he chickens out makes it a fictional book and then in 1850 you get household words which is his i guess this is new periodical really isn't it emily he's kind of launching a magazine and it's got a christmas edition every year it costs tuppence it's much cheaper the 1851 edition has a lovely piece called what christmas is to a bunch of people which i love as a title it's so unvictorian what christmas

is to a bunch of people it feels like a sort of first draft that he hasn't really thought it through but it's actually a really lovely piece and it's about how different people experience christmas in the family and i thought maybe, you'd like to give us your finest Dickensian performance of The Father. The father of the family rubs his hands with a genial smile when Christmas comes. And yet he now and then raises one finger to the calculating organ of his cranium with rather a thoughtful air,

suggestive of certain bills and taxes which his resolved shall not weigh upon his mind. Why should they? He will get through his Christmas bills somehow or other, as he has done before. What if he does see half a dozen more grey hairs displaying themselves, as though to remind him that another year has passed, and a certain line or two in his face does look a trifle deeper than when he had last observed it? Meanwhile he stands, thrumming a pleased but impatient tattoo with his fingers upon the banisters, and inhaling every now and then a savoury whiff of sweet herbs rising up from the kitchen.

Oh, beautifully done. Thank you so much, Mike. He's a happy little chap, isn't he? A happy little chap, but the little sense there of the grey hairs coming, the wrinkles deepening, the bills, the worries. It's quite emotional. Yeah, I sort of get it. I i get this guy i get where he's coming from he's gonna put all that into tomorrow's box tomorrow's me can sort that out he's gonna have a good time he's got some chestnuts to eat this bloke exactly yeah punch to drink

and some punch to give to the kids as well presumably but um i think it's a rather beautiful little vignette there of christmas is this where, yeah, we all know that the problems are mounting, but at the same time, we're going to just sort of stop and enjoy it and enjoy the family time. But then in 1851, we get a different essay the following year, and it's called What Christmas Is As We Grow Older. And it's much more profoundly moving and sad. It's about grief and bereavement. I suppose, Emily, the question always with Dickens is, is this coming from his personal life? Yeah, so Dickens did experience a lot of trauma in his life. We talked about his childhood. At this moment of writing, he's recently lost his

baby daughter, Dora, his father, John, and his beloved older sister, Fanny, and her son, Henry, who was possibly the inspiration for Tiny Tim, and all of that happens within three years. He also grieves for Catherine's sister Mary, who had lived with them and who had died in the late 1830s at the age of 17. In one of his Christmas stories, he wrote, Yes, we can look upon these children angels that alight so solemnly, so beautifully among the living children by the fire, and can bear to think how they departed from us. Entertaining angels unawares as the patriarchs did, the playful children are unconscious of their guests, but we can see them. Yeah, it's definitely a tough time for him. You

can see the sadness infused into his writing here. And in the 1850s, Dickens is back to writing novels, but they're slightly different. Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit. He's no longer doing the fun, cheerful, witty travel adventures. And in 1857, the Christmas bubble properly bursts because our 45-year-old Charlie meets an 18-year-old actress called Ellen Ternan. And things get disappointingly predictable. What would the cricket on the half say, Emily? The moral conscience surely chirping away saying, don't do it, Charlie, don't.

Yeah, it's not a great look. And it's a problem for his reputation as this kind of moral figure as well. And he ruthlessly separates from Catherine in 1858. She has to move out of the house. She doesn't see most of her children again until after Dickens dies. Wow.

And this is kind of spurred by having a bracelet sent to her that was meant for Ellen. Oh, that's the plot of Love Actually. Hang on a minute. Love Actually is a Christmas Dickens story. What? Hang on. Oh, goodness me.

Poor Emma Thompson. Sorry. I mean, poor Catherine. On a serious note, this is a huge scandal for Dickens because it gets out into the papers, doesn't it? He sort of tries to write a defence and and everyone's like you're a jerk we can love his literature but he's an absolute monster to her isn't he yeah he absolutely is and as I say keeps her children from her for for the rest of his life essentially and and writes things about her that suggests that

she's a bad mother that she's illiterate and really paints this picture that that puts a lot of the blame on Catherine and he can't have had that much of an issue with her with ten children, can he? No, absolutely not. It's been happy families up to this point and then suddenly he decides he wants a younger model. But we're a comedy show and it's Christmas, so let's move past that and let's get back to the holly jolly fun stuff. In 1859, Charles Dickens, having separated,

gets a very fun Christmas gift from the actor Charles Vector. Any guesses what it was, Mike? Clue, it arrived in 94 pieces. Build your own suckling pig? It's a precursor to Lego, basically. Build your own is absolutely spot on. Lego, not far off. I think fairly big.

He's going to need some help to build this. What is it? Is it like a sort of Bill Jones brewum or something? Bill Jones handsome cab? Sort of Caterham Seven of his day. That's not, you're not far off. It's got a kit carriage. It's not a sports car. It is a Swiss chalet. Build your own flat pack Swiss chalet

in 94 pieces. What? The classic gift for that celebrated novelist in your life. We've all done it. And Mamie Dickens his daughter who later writes in remembrances of her father Mamie tells us all about it Emily and it's quite a fun story yeah I love this Ikea moment for the men of the Dickens family so so Mamie tells us one very severe Christmas when the snow was so deep as to make outdoor amusement for our guests impossible my father suggested that he and the inhabitants of the bachelor's cottage should pass the time in unpacking the French chalet, which had been sent to him by Mr. Vector and which reached

Haim station, his nearest train station, in a large number of packing cases. Unpacking these and fitting the pieces together gave them interesting employment and some topics of conversation for our luncheon party. It was probably particularly difficult for them because the instructions were in German, which would make sense if it was Swiss, not French. And the resulting object was basically Dickens's man cave or shed at the bottom of his garden. And he actually had a tunnel built under the road so that he could get to it without having to see people. And he wrote in there in the summers for the last years of his life. Amazing. I'm currently in my little man cave in my garden, so I feel like a tunnel is the next thing I need.

But yeah, a bunch of Englishmen building a Swiss chalet, which they think is French and the instructions are in German. It sounds like a Taskmaster challenge. Mike, are you getting flashbacks? That is spectacular. Bold as brass. I mean, that's why you need the punch, isn't it? That would never happen, especially in those awful weather conditions. Yeah, in the snow, you absolutely need...

Maybe that second glass of brandy in the punch is what fuels you on. In the 1860s, we get A Tale of Two Cities, one of his Christmas stories rejigged. We get another new magazine called All the Year Round. Then we get his masterpiece Great Expectations, which many would say is his best. And then we get Our Mutual Friend, not so good perhaps. I know, it's controversial.

Some people love it and some people don't. So it's one of those sort of Marmite novels. But what I want to talk about is none of that. I want to talk about the 1866 Christmastide Sports Day. You know it well, Mike, right? Sure, sure I do. 66, you said? Yeah, that one?

Yeah, the classic. The classic 66 Sports Day. Emily, what is the 1866 Sports Day? Give us the gist. So he's got this fancy house in Kent now and he's kind of enjoying being the country squire and he puts on this huge festive sports day on Boxing Day for as many as 3000 local people down in Kent. And he's the organiser and because he's Dickens

and takes on too much, he's also a referee for all of the events and gives money as prizes. He supervised the building of the course, planting of ropes and flags to keep the crowds back and marked out the sporting zones. He's kind of running his own little mini Winter Olympics. and marked out the sporting zones. He's kind of running his own little mini Winter Olympics. It's amazing, isn't it? Mike, what would be your Dickens-themed Winter Sports Day events? What are they going to be called if we have to throw another one?

Maybe the Oyster Frisbee Christmastide Spectacular. Something like that. Very similar to our Frisbee, but with lots of Frisbees being used at the same time and all of the Frisbees are oysters. So they're quite out of their shells quite hard quite hard to throw lovely I'm thinking we can have

maybe the Scrooge Looge the Bob Cratchit Bob Slay nice the David Hopperfield yeah you have to hop across the field

and the Artful Dodgeball maybe another one these are my Dickensian sports Whack the Whackford maybe very nice

we'll book a field 3,000 people and we'll have some of our events and see who shows up. Pay to Bob and go for a ride on the Dick Swiveller. So no sports day in Christmas 1867 because he's off to America again. Charles Dickens

is on his second big US tour. He's already been superstar famous in 1842. He's even more famous this time. And what's this one for, Emily? So he does it for the money, partly, and lots of his friends advise him not to do it, essentially. So he's going and he's reading parts of his works. On Christmas Eve of that year, he reads from the Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol in Boston. On Christmas Day, he's traveling to New York and he speaks at Steinway Hall on Boxing Day. And again, he's overworking himself.

He starts to get ill. One of the reasons his friends didn't want him to do this is because to New York and he speaks at Steinway Hall on Boxing Day. And again, he's overworking himself. He starts to get ill. One of the reasons his friends didn't want him to do this is because how much it takes out of him. He's got a gruelling schedule. He's suffering from overwork. He wanted to bring Ellen Ternan, his mistress, along with him, but was worried that people would maybe notice and might not approve. So he's away from home, away from his family, away from Ellen and working hard that Christmas. His health is fading. He's really burning the candle at both ends here, isn't he? OK, so 1869 in the immortal words of George Michael is his last Christmas. He at the time is working on his final novel, which he never finishes, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And he sends a very moving and beautifully scripted Christmas letter to his tour manager, George Dolby.

And do you know what it says, Mike? I've no idea. I don't know. Love again? Tour again? Go on without me. Go on without me? I don't know. Yeah, it's a very beautiful and moving message. And it says, Emily... And I want to do justice to this because visually it's very impressive

and it's very difficult to convey this in terms of audio. It says, where is that turkey? It has not arrived. All capitals, 11 exclamation marks, every word on a different line. Where is that turkey? Dickens at the height of his writing. Dolby had promised to send a huge Christmas turkey, but it was damaged by a fire breaking out on the train and never arrived, along with a lot of people's Christmas presents and hampers and gifts on that train. It's a classic Christmas nightmare, isn't it? That turkey.

Yeah, no turkey for Christmas. So that's it. So there we go. This beautiful message from the esteemed writer to his long-suffering friend. Where is my turkey? I mean, Mike, have you ever had a Christmas disaster with the food? You can top that. I don't think we've ever needed a turkey that was big enough

that someone was sending it down on a special train. So, I mean, it's a hubristic tale, I think. That's why I train my children to know that the Christmas traditional meal is crunchy nut cornflakes. They don't know any different. I don't let them read any Dickens or see any Christmas movies, Christmas books. They don't know. As we've sort of alluded to, really, Dickens is in poor health, even in 67.

And sadly, he passes away. He's just sort of run out of energy and dies pretty young, really. That is the end of our conversation, which means... The Nuance Window! It's time for The Nuance Window. This is where Emily gets to talk for two whole uninterrupted minutes while Mike and I go and sit back and mull it over with our mulled wine. See what we did there. Nicely done.

So, Emily, you have two minutes. I'm going to get my stopwatch up. And without much further ado, let's have a nuance window, please. I want to essentially rant about how we know what we know about Dickens and why we think what we think about him. So you probably have a specific, usually beardy Dickens-y image in your mind, whether you've read his work or not. Dickens' daughter Katie wrote in a letter to the playwright George Bernard Shaw, If you could make the public understand that my father was not a joyous, jocose gentleman walking about the world with a plum pudding and a bowl of punch, you would greatly oblige me. We have the sort of vision of Dickens as the man who invented Christmas and also as a kind of literary institution that we foist on unimpressed school children.

And yet prior to the 1970s or thereabouts, Dickens wasn't generally considered worthy of academic study in the first place. He was always popularly read, but not always the big canonical writer that he is today. The myth-making process around Dickens goes right back to Dickens crafting his own image very deliberately. A lot of what we've discussed about how Dickens felt about his own Christmases comes from fiction and journalism he wrote and accounts by his children like Mamie, more on board with the Dickens image than Katie, and friends like George Dolby of the ominous Turkey Letter, who are all trying to protect or promote a particular image of him too. That's the beginning of the Dickens industry, a whole myth-making process that sought to promote him

as a social reformer with a strong moral character, especially in light of the treatment of his wife. And we can see how successful this has been today by focusing on the word Dickensian, which we've all used quite a lot in this episode. But what does it mean? I've seen it in the news just this week, and it can mean bad

working conditions, a Dickensian Christmas, Dickensian characters in court cases. All the associations we have with the word Dickensian are elements of Dickens's character and writing that he and others around him sought to promote. And it leaves out other elements of his life, both good and bad. Dickensian Christmases do not involve unhappy marriages, generally, for example. So take details about Dickens's life and where that information comes from with a grain of salt. And every time you see the word Dickensian, you'll notice it's got a kind of different cultural baggage attached to it, depending on the context. But it's still impressive to me that he's one of the few authors to become adjectives. Yes, beautifully done. Thank you so much.

What is the Wozniak brand? What is Wozniakian? Yes, what's the Wozniakian Christmas? Wozniak probably means you didn't get around to some of the crucial elements. Probably some burnt toast somewhere unwrapped. Presents,

weeping gnashing of teeth, hastily repackaged presents that are stolen from next door's garden. A nightmare. A living nightmare. I'm sure that's not true. I'm sure the Wozniakian Christmas is a delight. But yeah, Dickensian, it's a word we all use, but none of us know what it means. It's very interesting.

So what do you know now? Well, it's time now for our quiz, really. It's what we call the So What Do You Know Now? It's a quickfire Christmas cracker quiz for Mike Wozniak to see how much he has remembered from our conversation. And are you feeling good about the quiz? Are you going to slay? Oh, very good.

These jokes really only work on paper. Yeah, a little homophone joke. Very good, yeah. But, you know, how are you feeling? Do you feel like you've learned stuff? Has it gone in or are you slightly terrified? Well, I've been hitting the punch throughout, so I might be a bit walking on some of the facts, but let's see. OK, well, we've got ten questions. Here we go. Question one.

During the bitter winter of 1814, when Charles was a young boy, London celebrated its final what on the Thames? Well, its final elephant going under Blackfriars Bridge. What was it, the Christmas ice fair? The Christmas snow fair? That's it, the frost fair. Frost fair. Question two.

Young Charles was sent to work at Warren's Blacking Warehouse in the early 1820s. Who did he meet, who he later immortalised in a book character? Bob Fagan. It was Bob Fagan. Question three. Dickens' debut Christmas writing was called Christmas Festivities in 1835. It was part of which sketchy series?

Sketches from Boz. Sketches by Boz, indeed. Question four. A Christmas carol sold out in just five days. But why did Dickens only receive £230 when he wanted £1,000? Because he put all his money into making them look real nice. Reds and greens and nice high quality paper.

Absolutely. And then he got involved in a legal battle as well. He did, yeah. The Tuppence Knock-Off Gang, was it? That's right. The Tuppence Knock-Off Gang. My criminal syndicate. Question five. What huge well-attended outdoor activity did Dickens

plan on Boxing Day 1866? Oh, this is down in Kent. This is his big Christmas games. Yeah, that's right. The sports day. Question six. Name three of Charles Dickens' five Christmas stories that he published. Oh, so the Christmas Carol.

Yep. Cricket on the hearth. Yes. Was it on the hearth or the heath? No, half. Yep. The battle of life. Yes. Very good. You could have had the chimes or the haunted man and the ghost bargain, but well done. Question seven. It's going very well so far, Mike. This is where it untangles. On your previous quiz, you got 9.5. You can go 0.5 better. You're toying with me. I'm going to unravel. Okay. Question seven. What are some of the key ingredients of Charles Dickens' festive punch?

Lemons. Yes. Brandy. Yep. Rum. Yeah. Think sweet things. Sugar.

Yes, very good. Question eight. Dickens' 1862 ghost story, The Haunted Man and the Ghost Bargain, was a huge hit and one of the first ever plays to use Pepper's ghost. But what was it? The actor was underneath the stage and then light was shone on them and there was a reflective surface that projected it onto something on the stage so it had this spooky apparition.

Absolutely correct. Question nine. What letter did Charles send to his tour manager during his last Christmas in 1869? Where is that turkey? Multiple exclamation marks. It has not arrived!

Yes, absolutely. And this for a perfect, perfect score. My father, as I recall him, contains festive memories by Dickens' daughter, aided by her aunt. Can you remember the name of the daughter? I think she was called Mary, but I think she was known by Mamie. Perfect score, Mike Wozniak. Amazing.

You provided, I mean, you gave extra information and everything. I feel like bonus points should be in. I'm going to give you 11 out of 10, a Christmas miracle. Thank you. Well, listeners, if you want to learn more about the history of Christmas, then you can check out our seasonal specials on either the Victorian Christmas or the Medieval Christmas. Or if you've gorged yourself on a tin of roses,

why not give the history of chocolate a go? If you've enjoyed today's episode, then please make sure to leave us a review, tell your pals and subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. We are back for a new series in February. But all that's left for me is to say a huge festive thank you to our guests

in History Corner. Our Dickensian Christmas connoisseur, Dr Emily Bell from the University of Leeds. Thank you, Emily. Thank you and pod bless us everyone for a podcast joke. Love it. Love it. Love it.

And in Comedy Corner, our maestro of merriment, the creator of the sketches of Woz himself, Mr Mike Wozniak. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. Thanks for having me and happy Christmas. And to you, lovely listener, join us next time as we ignite the brandy on another historical pudding of the past. But for now, I'm off to go and see where my turkey is. It has not arrived.

Bye. Bye. Your Detomy was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research was by Jess White. This episode was written and produced by Emma Neguse and me. The assistant producer was Emmy Rose Price-Goodfellow. The project manager was Isla Matthews. And the audio producer was Steve Hankey.

I find quantum. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. And I'm Robin Ince, and we have a new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. And on this series, we have been across the world, Southern Hemisphere and Northern Hemisphere. And we've been talking about what we've learned from COVID with Dame Sarah Gilbert. We've been to Los Angeles, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory with Conan O'Brien. And we've been dealing with the science of ageing. Very, very dear to your heart, of course, isn't it?

Because we need to explain why you look like that. And we'll end up with our Christmas special with Tim Minchin on the science of wine. If you'd like to listen to The Infinite Monkey Cave, we're on BBC Sounds now. You can, in fact, listen to the whole series. We'll also probably deal with the nature of stars, the death of the universe, the birth of the universe, and everything in between. In order to make a cow, you must first create a universe.

You don't make a cow, do you? Can you make a cow? Can we make a cow from scratch? Turned out nice again. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th.

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