The Shorthand Mysteries: with Dr. Claire Wood & Prof. Hugo Bowles Artwork

Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire! 🔥

Actor Dominic Gerrard hosts an exciting new series that explores the Life and Times of Charles Dickens: his extraordinary novels, who he was as a person, his career as a performer, and his activism.
Guests include: Stephen Fry, Miriam Margolyes, Armando Iannucci, Alice Loxton, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Lucinda Hawksley, John Mullan, Pen Vogler, Andrew Davies, Rosie Holt, Bernard Cornwell .... and many more academics, writers, actors, directors and descendants of the great man himself!
Along side these interviews there are special Dickens readings from across his works ...
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Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire! 🔥

The Shorthand Mysteries: with Dr. Claire Wood & Prof. Hugo Bowles

October 13, 2023 • Dominic Gerrard

Are you an unsung codebreaker? Does your knowledge and feel for Dickens mean that you could be the next person to crack some of the hieroglyphic mystery of the shorthand system that Dickens created for himself. Or are you able to trace the source of the writings that Dickens read from whilst dictating to his pupil Arthur Stone …?

A year ago Dominic caught up with Dr. Claire Wood & Prof. Hugo Bowles on their extraordinary Dickens Code project. Since they last spoke, Claire and Hugo have not only won the Research Project of the Year: Times Higher Education Award but have now - for the very first time - pooled all of Dickens’ surviving shorthand manuscripts into one place in a special online exhibition entitled - Decoding Dickens: The Shorthand Mysteries …

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Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!