Yesterday, FTCT Director, Anna was at the Charles Dickens Museum for a very special reason. We are currently collaborating with the museum on a special exhibition – Restless Shadow: Dickens the Campaigner. The exhibition highlights the author’s tireless work as a campaigner and his interest in social welfare, focusing on the charities he supported.

You may not know, but Mr Dickens was heavily involved with our charity shortly after it started, as the Chairman of Appeal in 1856.

As part of the exhibition, the museum have commissioned a series of voice recordings of extracts from Dickens’ work, not only as a novelist but also his crusading journalism and public speeches. To read an extract from the speech Dickens gave on our charity’s behalf in 1856 we enlisted the generous support of Lisa, whose twin boys Cameo and Carone recently received a grant from FTCT. Each recording took place in the same study used by Dickens himself, in his only surviving London home - 48 Doughty Street.

In one of his many speeches, Dickens demonstrates his passion for what he saw as social injustice and the Government’s reluctance to recognise there was even a social issue. He talked about a school in Field Lane in London, where, whilst some improvements had been made, Dickens was impassioned and felt there was a lot more the Government could do. He said: ‘It was an awful thing, looking round upon those one hundred and sixty seven representatives of many thousands, to reflect that a Government, unable, with the least regard to truth, to plead ignorance of such a place should proceed as if the sleepers were never to awake’

This exciting exhibition will launch on 9 May and run until Sunday 29 October at the museum. Watch this space for more details. In the meantime, you can find out more about the museum via their website.