{"id":7885,"date":"2012-02-05T12:02:32","date_gmt":"2012-02-05T11:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7885"},"modified":"2012-02-05T12:11:20","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T11:11:20","slug":"bicentenary-of-birth-of-charles-dickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7885","title":{"rendered":"Bicentenary of birth of Charles Dickens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The wonderful English writer <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_Dickens\">Charles Dickens<\/a> was born on 7 February 1812 &#8211; exactly 200 years ago this week &#8211; and died on 8 June 1870.<\/p>\n<p>I confess that, like too many people, I have read very little Dickens since I left school but, last summer, I did read &#8220;A Tale Of Two Cities&#8221; which I have reviewed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/fbooks.html#ATOTC\">here<\/a>. And, of course, there have been countless television and film adaptations of his works such as the 1958 version of &#8220;ATOTC&#8221; which I have reviewed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/FilmsT-Y.html#ATOTC\">here<\/a>. A month ago, I\u00a0visited the new\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.museumoflondon.org.uk\/London-Wall\/Whats-on\/Exhibitions-Displays\/Dickens-London\/Default.htm\">Charles Dickens exhibition<\/a> at the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.museumoflondon.org.uk\/london-wall\/\">Museum of London<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So the work of Dickens lives on &#8211; but so do the social problems that he highlighted in his novels. We may not have the abject poverty of his times, but the devastating impact of the recession on so many lives would doubtless have been the subject of his writing if he were alive today.<\/p>\n<p>As my personal tribute to Dickens, I have used one of his most famous quotes for my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Thoughts.html\">Thought For The Week<\/a> this Sunday:<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote><p><strong>&#8220;Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen, six, result happiness. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds, nought, and six, result misery&#8221;<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Micawber\u00a0in &#8220;David Copperfield&#8221; by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The wonderful English writer Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 &#8211; exactly 200 years ago this week &#8211; and died on 8 June 1870. I confess that, like too many people, I have read very little Dickens since I left school but, last summer, I did read &#8220;A Tale Of Two Cities&#8221; which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7885"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7897,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7885\/revisions\/7897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}