Gerald Dickens: My Life on the Road With A Christmas Carol

by Gerald Dickens

256 pages, Paperback

Published November 30, 2023

Reviews

[Squire]

A delightful account of Gerald Dickens' life on the road while performing various adaptations of the works of Charles Dickens (and some original material), focusing on his one-man-show of A Christmas Carol --showing how his performances have evolved over the years. It also proves to be a moving tribute not only to the legacy of the great writer, but also to the persons and locales that have shaped his life as an actor.

Gerald Dickens is the great-great (doubley great!) grandson of Charles Dickens. Since 1993, he has toured the US with his shows and has stayed at my hotel for the last 12 years while in Kansas City to perform Carol. So maybe I'm a tad biased in my rating. Deal with it.

A particularly boring drive between Omaha, NE and Kansas City, MO along I-29 (which he admits is his least favorite stretch of highway) caused Dickens to blog his journey in the style of Ian Fleming. Included in the post is the following:

"...Dickens had naturally noticed the manager's name was Squire...Squire had worn a striped shirt of royal blue and white, that may have been handmade in Saville Row. The tie had been a garish mix of blues and pinks, and the combination proved that Squire was not a man driven by convention. Dickens approved of him, and the positive image was confirmed by a firm dry handshake and a conspiratorial smile."

Truth be told, my shirt was a royal blue/white window pane french twill handmade by the fine tailors of Land's End and my lack of convention in neckwear is that I like clashing patterns between shirt and tie.

So. Well. There it is.

Immortalized in a book probably no one will read.

What more can I ask for?

[Simon Trelawney]

The author is an actor, playwright, theatrical producer and, very importantly, also the great, great, grandson of Charles Dickens. We have a brief but very colourful description of his childhood and especially the family Christmases, gloriously theatrical affairs worthy of Charles himself, courtesy of his indulgent and imaginative parents. It then turns into an account of his finding acting as his vocation, his early experiences in the theatre and his growing appreciation of the works of his great ancestor of which, oddly, he had not hitherto been a huge fan, equating them with boring classroom lessons.
He starts to write and perform stage versions of excerpts from Charles Dickens' works, and especially 'A Christmas Carol', which he then takes on tour around Britain and the United States, playing to large houses and to rapturous reviews. They are one-man shows in which he plays, remarkably, Scrooge, Marley, Cratchit, the three ghosts and all and sundry. He recounts his many adventures whilst on tour, gives us a detailed breakdown of how he organizes his stage show and the props and so on and ends with the script of the piece. It must be a quite extraordinary performance to pull all of this off. Regrettably, I have not had the chance to see it, though I did get to see another of his one-man shows, a skit on Charles Dickens meeting a youthful Algernon Swinburne whilst on holiday, and it was indeed a tour de force.
The book is a diverting read, though marred by a number of spelling mistakes and poor punctuation in places. There are several black and white photos of our man in full flow as he performs. I could have wished for a Table of Contents and perhaps even an index.

[Caitlin Moon]

An excellent and engaging read. Mr Dickens' love of sharing his great-great grandfather's work, engaging with the people that he meets, and his own talent as a storyteller really shine through.i thoroughly enjoyed this.

[Art the Bookworm]

A fantastic account of actor Gerald Dickens' adventures on the road performing his one man show of A Christmas Carol. He also talks about how his performance and gives an actors interpretation of the story. This book is a must have for fans of Dickens, Christmas, and stage performances.

[The Book Adventurer]

Having seen him perform A Christmas Carol, it was so interesting to learn how he started out, and also to look behind the scenes of his performances.