The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens with Helena Kelly

If you think you already know the story of Charles Dickens’ life, then you might want to think again. Almost everything you’re familiar with was first mentioned in an authorised biography written by Dickens’ close friend John Forster 150 years ago. It’s the version of events that Dickens himself chose to make public, and newly accessible archives reveal that it’s crammed with gaps, inconsistencies, and outright lies. There’s the sister whose existence Dickens kept secret and the Jewish relations whose faith he strove to conceal. There’s plagiarism, fraud, and suicide. And that’s only for starters.

Helena Kelly, author of Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, will explore Dickens’ story from his childhood to his deathbed, offering a fresh - and deeply troubling - perspective on the man who remains one of Britain’s best-known novelists.