London Lit Festival 13: Charles Dickens And Queen Victoria - An Odd Couple

'Dickensian' and 'Victorian' are two adjectives regularly attached to descriptions of 19th-century England - the former because Charles Dickens (1812-1870) covered the territory in his novels, the latter because Queen Victoria, born in 1819, reigned from 1837 to 1901.

Their lives ran in parallel. Dickens married in 1836, Victoria in 1840. He ended his marriage effectively in 1858, hers ended soon after in 1861 with the death of her Consort, Albert. Each of them had nine surviving children. Each was keenly aware of the other, yet they did not meet until three months before the death of Dickens.

In the fourth of five lectures on different topics, Claire Tomalin unravels the story of the relationship, or non-relationship, between these two remarkable contemporaries.