Gerald Charles Dickens (actor) - Life and Career

Life and Career

Born in Tonbridge in Kent, the fourth child and second son of David Kenneth Charles Dickens (1925–2005) and his wife Betty (1927–2010), Gerald Dickens is the grandson of Sir Gerald Charles Dickens RN (after whom he was named) and the great grandson of Sir Henry Fielding Dickens KC; he is also the cousin of author Monica Dickens, biographer and writer Lucinda Hawksley and actor Harry Lloyd. Dickens attended Huntleys Secondary School for Boys in Tunbridge Wells in Kent and West Kent College.

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 BBC's Songs of Praise.

Originally from Goudhurst in Kent, Dickens now lives in Abingdon in Oxfordshire with his partner Liz Hayes. With his former wife he has a son, Cameron Thomas Charles Dickens (born in 1999).