Today’s episode is on Dickens’ final Christmas Book The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain. A deeply powerful story, where the chemist, Stephen Redlaw is offered the chance to forget all his painful memories by a Phantom who is a ghastly copy of himself drawn from the shadows in his study. Redlaw accepts the ghost’s bargain … but then faces a desperate struggle to have this spell lifted again, when to his horror he discovers that his new gift has a 'King Midas' quality of infecting everyone he meets (or nearly everyone) with the same curse of forgetting …

Light in the story comes in the form of Millie, one of Dickens’ good little women and a ministering angel to the people around her. Millie, her sparky husband William Swidger and her ancient father in law Philip, quietly try to help Stephen: turning up the lamps or decorating his study with that powerful wintry emblem, holly …

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Dr Lydia Craig, Lecturer in English at the University of Eastern Illinois. Lydia co-authored The Verse of Charles Dickens for Edinburgh University Press and her specialities include Nineteenth Century Race and Gender and The English Novel.She is both Associate editor of The Dickensian and The Charles Dickens Letters project, Co-editor of Dickens Search and Treasurer of The Dickens Society …

This episode was first broadcast in 13th December 2024

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

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