Dickens descendent Lucinda Dickens Hawksley returns to this year's festival which she says is on a bigger scale than other Dickens celebrations around the globe.
“For me, that really feels like the start of my Christmas,” Hawksley says. “I missed it the last couple of years, not being able to go to it. It’s such a soothing thing to do. My cousins and I are always jet-lagged, so to go and sit in the beautiful church — it’s such a lovely church — and just listen to these wonderful musicians playing the handbells sounding so Christmasy, that's really lovely.
“It’s just really, really lovely to be able to go and be a part of that part of the community as well, because I think it’s important that the festival reaches out to people who can't necessarily get there themselves,” she says. “So we get dressed up and we go and talk to people, and they always really appreciate seeing the costumes and things. I think that’s really important.”
“Actually he spent a lot of his life and large chunks of every year living overseas and loving it,” she adds. “He spoke French, he spoke Italian; he could write letters in French and Italian. He was a real European. He’d be gutted about Brexit, I think.” “I spent a long time going through letters and other people's diaries,” says Hawksley. “It was really fun looking at how Dickens helped to create what we think of as the modern Christmas, but also how he celebrated it himself. I love Christmas, though. For me it was an absolute gift of the book.”
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