The achievement of Universal Coverage in Health Care represents the best of humanity. Thanks to its creation, the solidarity of a few countries, replaced the dependence on charity suffered by a large part of the population to access medical and social services. Access to health care is a human right, not some sort of philanthropy.
| Charles Dickens and Prince |
Hornby draws parallels between the Victorian novelist and the musician in this heartfelt homage to these brilliant, driven individuals
At the start of this heartfelt exercise in hero worship, Nick Hornby gathers together a throng of what he calls “My People” and ushers them into a VIP room in his head. They make up an eclectic pantheon, with Arsène Wenger jostling Joan Didion and the sitcom scriptwriters Galton and Simpson next to the gloomy painter Edward Hopper. Dickens and Prince are “two among many” in the gilded crowd, but Hornby singles them out for special homage. Dickens rescued him from the stupor of adolescence by showing that books were an escape route for the mind; Prince, with his keening falsetto, the prestidigitation of his guitar-playing and his hyperkinetic dance moves, delivered a physical excitement that is music’s special prerogative. Dickens made Hornby laugh, while Prince thrilled him by seeming to offer “hours of erotic ecstasy”.
Elif Shafak, Sarah Perry, Jeffrey Boakye and others tell us which of the two totemic literary figures they favour
Killian Fox
Sunday 2 March 2025
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College Oxford and author of This Is Shakespeare
It’s a brilliantly preposterous thesis that Peter sets out but I disagree. What’s great about Dickens is the maximalist, chock-a-block, teeming sense you get of that world. His work is like an extraordinary baroque cathedral that you could spend your life looking at, absorbed in the detail. By contrast, Shakespeare is more like a black box. There’s a huge amount of potential to do these plays in very different worlds with very different outcomes. So what’s great about Dickens is it’s all there. But what’s completely indispensable about Shakespeare is it’s waiting for us to combine with it to make something new. I don’t think rereading Dickens makes a new Dickens, but rereading or reperforming Shakespeare does make a new Shakespeare.
After rereading the entire works of the great Victorian novelist during the pandemic, Peter Conrad became convinced – whisper it – that Dickens is an even greater writer than that other British literary giant, the Bard
Early in 2020, as society shut down, I retreated behind closed doors with Charles Dickens, who kept me company and cheered me up throughout the pandemic. Carried along by narratives that Dickens thought of as speedy locomotives and warmed by a combustible imagination that he compared to an industrial forge, I soon felt no need for tame timed circuits of the local park, and I even stopped fretting about the imminent end of the world. But although Dickens saved from me one disease, he infected me with another: escaping Covid-19, I contracted an incurable monomania instead.
Parts of an extensive collection of letters from Dickens’ relative and housekeeper Georgina Hogarth reveal her role in the making of a literary giant
Kate McCusker
Wednesday 7 February 2024
A collection of letters from one of Charles Dickens’ most valued confidantes will go on display in London for the first time this week to mark 212 years since the literary giant’s birth.
| Charles Dickens |
On Killing Charles Dickens
I did everything I could to avoid writing my historical novel. When I finally started “The Fraud,” one principle was clear: no Dickens.
"David Copperfield" is probably the most autobiographical novel by Charles Dickens. He uses many incidents of his childhood and early life to create a considerable fictional achievement.
"David Copperfield" also stands as a midpoint in Dickens' oeuvre and is at least somewhat indicative of Dickens' work. This novel contains a complicated plot structure, a concentration on the moral and social worlds, and some of Dickens' most wonderful comic creations. "David Copperfield" is a broad canvas on which the great master of Victorian fiction uses his entire palette. Unlike many of his other novels, however, "David Copperfield" is written from the point of view of its titular character, looking back on the ups and downs of his long life.
Charles Dickens, though far from tall, was graceful and of a pleasing appearance. A portrait of him, painted by Maclise when he was twenty-seven, is in the National Portrait Gallery. He is seated in a handsome chair at a writing-table, with a small, elegant hand resting lightly on a manuscript. He is grandly dressed, and wears a vast satin neck-cloth. His brown hair is curled and falls well below the ears down each side of his face. His eyes are fine, and the thoughtful expression he wears is such as an admiring public might expect of a very successful young author. What the portrait does not show is the animation, the shining light, the activity of heart and mind, which those who came into contact with him saw in his countenance. He was always something of a dandy, and in his youth favoured velvet coats, gay waistcoats, coloured neck-cloths and white hats; but he never quite achieved the effect he sought: people were surprised and even shocked by his dress, which they described as both slipshod and flashy.
His grandfather, William Dickens, began life as a footman, married a housemaid and eventually became steward at Crewe Hall, the seat of John Crewe, Member of Parliament for Chester. William Dickens had two sons, William and John; but the only one that concerns us is John, first because he was the father of England’s greatest novelist, and secondly because he served as a model for his son’s greatest creation, Mr. Micawber. William Dickens died, and his widow stayed on at Crewe Hall as housekeeper. After thirty-five years she was pensioned off, and, perhaps to be near her two sons, went to live in London. The Crewes educated her fatherless boys, and provided them with a means of livelihood. They got John a post in the Navy Pay Office. There he made friends with a fellow-clerk and presently married his sister, Elizabeth Barrow. From the beginning of his married life he appears to have been in financial trouble, and he was always ready to borrow money from anyone who was foolish enough to lend it. But he was kind-hearted and generous, no fool, industrious, though perhaps but fitfully; and he evidently had a taste for good wine, since the second time he was arrested for debt, it was at the suit of a wine-merchant. He is described in later life as an old buck who dressed well and was for ever fingering the large bunch of seals attached to his watch.
A book review
The very title of this book indicates the confidence of conscious genius. In a new aspirant for public favor, such a title might have been a good device to attract attention; but the most famous novelist of the day, watched by jealous rivals and critics, could hardly have selected it, had he not inwardly felt the capacity to meet all the expectations he raised. We have read it, as we have read all Mr. Dickens's previous works, as it appeared in installments, and can testify to the felicity with which expectation was excited and prolonged, and to the series of surprises which accompanied the unfolding of the plot of the story. In no other of his romances has the author succeeded so perfectly in at once stimulating and baffling the curiosity of his readers. He stirred the dullest minds to guess the secret of his mystery; but, so far as we have learned, the guesses of his most intellectual readers have been almost as wide of the mark as those of the least apprehensive. It has been all the more provoking to the former class, that each surprise was the result of art, and not of trick; for a rapid review of previous chapters has shown that the materials of a strictly logical development of the story were freely given. Even after the first, second, third, and even fourth of these surprises gave their pleasing electric shocks to intelligent curiosity, the denouement was still hidden, though confidentially foretold. The plot of the romance is therefore universally admitted to be the best that Dickens has ever invented. Its leading events are, as we read the story consecutively, artistically necessary, yet, at the same time, the processes are artistically concealed. We follow the movement of a logic of passion and character, the real premises of which we detect only when we are startled by the conclusions.