Rachelle's Reading List, Tuesday February 7th, 2012

Happy Birthday Charles Dickens! [InOtherNews] It’s a far, far better Google Doodle they do, than they have ever done: Google marks what would be the 200th birthday of author Charles Dickens. Dickens Turns 200: Prince Charles to lead celebrations [Telegraph] Prince Charles cuts a birthday cake for Charles Dickens as he stands with his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall during a tour of the Dickens Museum

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will be lead celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. Events to be held across the country include a wreath-laying ceremony at Dickens's grave in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey and at the novelist's birthplace in Portsmouth, Hampshire. The congregation at Westminster Abbey will include the largest ever gathering of descendants of the Victorian novelist as well as representatives from the worlds of literature, film, theatre and the media. The Prince will lay a wreath on Dickens's grave where he was buried in 1870. The author had asked to be buried at Rochester Cathedral but a public outcry led to him being placed in Poets' Corner.

Ralph Fiennes, who stars as Magwitch in a new film adaptation of Great Expectations, will read an extract from Bleak House with readings also being given by Mark Dickens, great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens, and biographer Claire Tomalin. Before the ceremony, the Prince and Duchess will visit the Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty Street, Holborn, where they will be given a reading by Gillian Anderson, who played Miss Havisham in the BBC's recent adaptation of Great Expectations. Simon Callow, author of Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World, will read from David Copperfield at a service being held at St Mary's Church, Portsmouth. He said: "It's going to be a dangerously moving occasion. I really made the strong decision to come to the place where he was born rather than to Westminster Cathedral where he never wanted to be." The British Council‘s 24-hour Global Dickens Read-a-thon will take place in 24 countries from Albania to Zimbabwe beginning in Australia with a reading from Dombey and Son.