Charles Dickens museum reopens after £3m restoration

A Lottery-backed project has transformed Dickens's London home. The museum is due to reopen next Monday.

           

When visitors arrive at the museum, they will find the author's shadow painted on the staircase wall to guide their way into the museum.

Dickens rented the house in Doughty Street for three years at £80 a year, and moved in in 1837 as a young husband with his new wife, Catherine Hogarth, and their first child, soon to be followed by two more. It was in this house that he made his name, publishing Nicholas Nickleby under his own name.

A £3.1m Heritage Lottery-backed restoration has transformed the building, opening the house next door as visitor facilities and incorporating a lift, giving disabled access for the first time to the basement and upper floors.

In the drawing room, where Dickens regularly entertained friends with performances from his works, visitors can sit on the sofa and hear the voice of the actor Simon Callow reading his words.

The back bedroom is shadowed by death, where his 17-year-old sister-in-law died in his arms, inspiring many deathbed scenes in his novels. On the walls there is a photograph acquired three weeks ago, of the scene of the Staplehurst train crash in 1865. Dickens, unhurt in the crash in which 19 people died, helped rescue many of those who were injured.

The attic is open to visitors for the first time, here they will find a barred window from the long since demolished Marshalsea prison. Where a 12 year old Dickens was imprisoned with the rest of his family when his father’s reckless spending got the family into debt.

The house was saved from modernisation by becoming a shabby boarding house, and then saved from demolition by public subscription, it became a museum in Dicken’s honour in 1925.

The one thing that may surprise visitors is that the house now doesn't look particularly Dickensian. The architect Dante Vanoli explained the restoration as "cleansing", removing layers of later alterations, rescuing original floorboards from under 20th-century lino, and taking out doors inserted in 1925 that gave parts of the building a Tudor appearance.

The house where Dickens invented the traditional Victorian Christmas is to be the only museum in the capital open on Christmas Day.

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Source: The Guardian 

Image: Lin Pernille Photography

Not Just Your Average Guide Books

Lonely Planet is one of the largest and well know travel guide publishers, but recently they have been putting out travel-related titles that aren’t just guide books.

Founded in 1973 by husband-and-wife team of Tony and Maureen Wheeler, Lonely Planet is now wholly owned by BBC Worldwide. Its core business has always been in travel guides, but over the past five years its trade and reference titles have been rapidly increasing.

Asia Pacific sales and marketing director Chris Zeiher  says; “We believe that publishing an inspirational and reference list of titles will create more frequent engagement with our travellers, and potentially reach a new audience, or a non-travelling market, for example, the armchair traveller.”

Lonely Planet has accumulated a large portfolio of images over the years and Chris Zeiher says this was the inspiration for a new line of books. “We had an idea to pack these stunning travel photographs in book format for customers to enjoy.

“This is when titles like Chasing Rickshaws and One Planet were created back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.”

The success of One Planet made the company realise that there is a demand out there for inspirational titles. This resulted in Lonely Planet investing in, and creating, its most successful non-guide book to date: The Travel Book.

The company is also reaching out to younger readers with its Not-For-Parents series launched just last year.  The aim of which is to inspire young minds to travel. This is not a series of guidebooks for children, but enchanting and fun volumes for children to get inspired about the world around them.

Currently, non-guide books comprise approximately 17% of Lonely Planets’ volume, and Zeiher expects this to continue rising in the years to come.

“We believe that publishing in other genres will inspire our travellers, and our loyal community, to think about destinations in different ways, and want to experience genuine connected travel experiences. This is at the core of what it is that Lonely Planet does; connecting travellers to the heart of a place.”

If you have a manuscript, but not sure what to do next, let us help you with our Publisher Packs.

Source: Writers Forum

Image: xlibber, Flickr

How should the CQC work in future? Have your say

Do you want a say in how the CQC should be run in the future? Well, now is your chance. But there is only a week left to send in your views.

The CQC are currently running a consultation that asks for your views on the changes they think they need to make to the way the organisation works. These changes include:

•   Regulating services in different ways and making greater use of the information they hold about them.

•   Strengthening the way they work with strategic partners.

•   Continuing to build better relationships with the public.

•   Building relationships with services that provide care.

•   Strengthening their unique responsibilities in relation to mental health services.

•   Continuing their drive to become a high performing organisation.

You can send your responses to the CQC in a number of ways:

·      Using the online form

·      Email the CQC at: cqcthenextphase@cqc.org.uk

·      Post your feedback to:

CQC The Next Phase


CQC National Customer Service Centre


Citygate, Gallowgate


Newcastle upon Tyne


NE1 4PA

Closing date: Thursday 6, December 2012.

If you are a healthcare provider and would like help with your CQC registration and documentation, visit us at Words Worth Reading Ltd. 

Source: www.cqc.org.uk 

Image: Must be Art, Flickr