Here is another freshly re-edited recording from my archive. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s biography of the first three decades of Dickens’ life, published by Harvard University Press, is a terrifically readable, refreshing look at the author’s life story which rescues Dickens from a sense of inevitability, that the only fate reserved for him was to become the greatest novelist of his day: long beard, serious expression… From the very first page of his book, Robert embraces the counter-factual to jolt us out of our complacency and shows how often Dickens’ life could have branched off in completely different directions.