THE audience at the Lymm Festival event at the United Reformed Church on Monday evening (26 June) had a treat which greatly exceeded their expectations.
There was one-man performance of ‘Great Expectations’ by Gerald Dickens, the great, great, great grandson of the author Charles Dickens. He received an enthusiastic standing ovation for his show, which took the audience through the life of orphan Pip from the lonely cold Kent marshes to the respectable world of London. Along the way we met many of Dickens’s greatest characters such as Miss Haversham and Magwitch.
Lymm already has a strong connection to Charles Dickens, with the annual Dickensian Festival taking place in the village each December. But Festival organisers recently uncovered another link, when they learned that one of Charles Dickens’s great, great, great grandsons happens to live in the village. The event provided the opportunity for a brief family reunion when Gerald was introduced to Ollie Danby, who is the Manager of Lymm Tennis Club – a venue which the Festival used for its Music Night last Saturday evening.
Ollie said, “I first met Gerald when I was a teenager but the last time I saw him was in 2012 when there was a large family gathering to celebrate 200 years of Charles’s birth. I know his brother and some cousins well and it was great to catch up with Gerald again.”
Gerald added, “I thoroughly enjoyed the performance and I wish the team all the best for the rest of the Festival. I hope we can work together again in the future. Meeting up with Ollie again was a completely unexpected bonus.”
Ollie and Gerald
