Broadstairs Dickens Festival

Broadstairs Dickens Festival

June

This nine-day festival commemorating the 19th-century novelist Charles Dickens and his association with the English town of Broadstairs features a play adapted from a different Dickens novel each year. The actors are members of the Broadstairs Dickens Players' Society, and they spend about eight months preparing for their June performance. During the festival, the entire town is transformed: people wander through the streets in Dickensian costumes, play croquet and other games popular during the 19th century, and attend bathing parties and social events with a Victorian theme. There are also concerts of Victorian music, exhibits, and lectures on Dickens.
Charles Dickens lived for many years in Bleak House, overlooking the harbor of Broadstairs. The festival was started by a later inhabitant of Bleak House, Gladys Waterer, in 1936. Although all of Dickens's works have been adapted and performed at the festival at least once, the town's nostalgia for its most famous citizen shows no signs of flagging.

CONTACTS:
Broadstairs Dickens Festival
10 Lanthorne Rd., Broadstairs
Kent, CT10 3NH United Kingdom
44-18-4386-1827
www.broadstairsdickensfestival.co.uk

SOURCES:
GdWrldFest-1985, p. 90
IntlThFolk-1979, p. 157