News
Dickens and Parliament
Thu 1 Nov 2012
As part of this year’s Parliament Week, the Hansard Society is a holding a free public event at Westminster to explore Dickens’s time in Parliament:
EVENT: Dickens and Parliament
TIME & DATE: 6:30pm, Wednesday 21st November
LOCATION: Attlee Suite, Portcullis House, Westminster
This year marked the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, heralded one of the greatest novelists in British history. Before that, Dickens toiled in the gallery of the House of Commons as a Parliamentary reporter.
What can we learn from Dickens’s experiences in Parliament? How may this less glamorous career have influenced his later works? And what did he think of Parliament and the Parliamentary process?
Speakers
- Professor John Drew – Professor of English, University of
Buckingham & author of Dickens the Journalist - Lucinda Hawksley – Dickens’ great great great granddaughter &
author of Charles Dickens - Dr Caroline Shenton – Director of the Parliamentary Archives &
author of The Day Parliament Burned Down - Andrew Sparrow – Senior Political Correspondent, Guardian &
author of Obscure Scribblers: A History of Parliamentary Reporting
With readings by
- Robert Rogers – Clerk of the House and Chief Executive, House
of Commons & author of two parliamentary miscellanies – Order!
Order! and Who Goes Home?
Chair
- Carolyn Quinn – Presenter, BBC Radio 4’s The Westminster
Hour & immediate past chair of the Press GalleryParliament Week, which runs from November 19 to 25, aims to build greater awareness, understanding and engagement with parliamentary democracy in the UK. The Hansard Society is one of the partners working with Parliament to organise events during this week. The Hansard Society is the UK’s leading independent, non-partisan political research and education charity.Please click here to sign up for this event or to register to attend this free event, visit the Hansard Society’s website: http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/
