Gerald Roderick Charles Dickens is an English actor and performer best known for his one man shows, based on the novels of his great-great-grandfather, Charles Dickens.
Background
Born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the fourth child and second son of David Kenneth Charles Dickens (1925–2005) and his wife Betty (1927–2010), Dickens is the grandson of Gerald Charles Dickens Registered Nurse (after whom he was named) and the great-grandson of Henry Fielding Dickens KC. He is also the cousin of author Monica Dickens, biographer and writer Lucinda Hawksley, and actor Harry Lloyd.
Education
Dickens attended Huntleys Secondary School for Boys in Royal Tunbridge Wells and West Kent College.
Career
He was the President of the Dickens Fellowship from 2005 to 2007. Inspired to be an actor by a performance of Nicholas Nickleby by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Gerald Dickens first performed his solo version of A Christmas Carol in America in 1993, returning annually to perform at historic hotels, libraries, theatres and Dickens festivals. In 2009, Dickens" American tour included such Christmas companies as Vaillancourt Folk Art and Byers Choice and has yielded national and local press
Based on the readings performed by Charles Dickens himself during his own British and American tours, Gerald Dickens performs extracts from The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby and A Christmas Carol among others, in the latter creating 26 characters in a performance described by The New York Times as "a once in a lifetime brush with literary history."
Dickens has recorded unabridged audiobooks of The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby.
In December 2011 he appeared on the British Broadcasting Corporation"s Songs of Praise. A keen golfer, he wrote and performs the two-act play Top Hole!, based on four golfing stories by P. G. Wodehouse.
In 2015 at the Music Box Theatre in Minneapolis he played Charles Dickens in Jeffrey Hatcher"s one-hander To Begin With, which was adapted from Dickens" The Life of Our Lord.