Mark Dickens

Charles Dickens was my great great grandfather. I wish I had known him or at least met someone who did, but he sadly died before my own grandfather had been born and there are very few people alive today who would have met his last surviving child Sir Henry Dickens who died in 1933. What a truly amazing person Charles Dickens must have been. I have tried to imagine what it would have been like to have seen his genius in action and witnessed his extraordinary personality and boundless energy, but despite the family stories that have been passed down the generations, and many books that have been written on the subject, it is not possible to really understand. He remains an enigma which is of course one of the reasons why he continues to be a fascinating figure, one of the great Britons of all time. Interest in his life and works remains undiminished 200 years after he was born.

Being a direct descendant of such a great man is a special privilege, and although I do indeed carry his genes within me they are well diluted after four generations! I would like to hope that I have inherited some of his talents, but writing is definitely not one of them! When I was at school I managed to achieve an A Level in English Literature and developed a love of reading, but my career has been away from literary matters. I spent 27 years as a Royal Naval officer in nuclear submarines and military intelligence during the Cold War and since then, for the last ten years I have been the Bursar of a school in Sussex. As a hobby I enjoy being the family genealogist and bringing together the ever growing and diverse members of the Dickens family.

It is a particular honour to be the President of the International Dickens Fellowship for the bicentenary year; a time of unprecedented opportunity to celebrate the life and works of the great man. I look forward to meeting as many people as I can and using my name and heritage to support the great work of the Fellowship. The interest in everything Dickensian is already at an extraordinary level and I hope all members will help spread the word at every opportunity. It would be a wonderful legacy of the bicentenary if we were able to introduce a new worldwide generation to the wonder of his writing and appreciation of his social reforms.

Mark Charles Dickens, August 2011