HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!! 🎃

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Dr. Kirstin Mills Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master of Research & Graduate Diploma of Research in the Faculty of Arts, at Macquarie University. Kirstin's recent articles include the chapter "Morphean Space and the Metaphysics of Nightmare ..."  published in Gothic Dreams and Nightmares for Manchester University Press.Their conversation flits and tumbles through the realms of 19th Century dreams and nightmares. Many of which are sure to have visited the young Charles Dickens, thanks to the bedtime stories told to him by Mary Weller, and the books he would later read voraciously …Expect to meet Demons, Vampires, the much overlooked Headless Horseman and - one of the greatest literary creations of all time - Ichabod Crane!Sounds of horses, dutch folk dances, eerie whistling and windy gusts on a mountain side were used provided under license by Epidemic SoundOriginal cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd  / Original cover headshot of Kirstin Mills © Kirstin Mills / Painted backdrop of The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane by John Quidor (1858) has been sourced through Wikipedia and is in the public domainThis episode was originally broadcast on 5th November 2025 Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

The ghostly episodes continue as Dominic welcomes back the inimitable Dr. Emily Middleton who helps piece together the scattered psychological fragments that create Dickens' To Be Read at Dusk ...  Five couriers sit high up watching the sun set over snowy peaks of the St Bernard's Pass, their minds flitting from one strange unsettling anecdote to another. Ideas of premonition, mesmerism, and the powerful telepathy that can exist between twins, abound in this story ...Additional sound effects of the ghostly mountain have been used, with permission, from Epidemic SoundOriginal cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd  / Original cover headshot of Emily Middleton © Dustin Smith, Skywall Photography / Background detail of Gornergrat Railway and Matterhorn, Valais, Alps of, Switzerland (1890-1900) Photochrom Print Collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsThis episode was originally broadcast on 8th November 2025 Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

This Halloween ... actor Jonathan Broadbent reads one of the interpolated ghost stories, from The Pickwick Papers In The Lawyer and The Ghost a somewhat disreputable young Lawyer has retired to his meagre lodgings one night and is forced to debate with something not of this world ...Original cover headshot of Jonathan Broadbent © Thumb Over The Lens  / Original Dickens illustrations sourced from Michael John Goodman's incredible Charles Dickens Illustrated GalleryThis reading was originally broadcast on 31st October 2025 Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Professor John Bowen who returns to this series to explore the hidden depths beneath the pages of one of Dickens' most iconic ghost stories -The Signal-ManWritten only a year after Dickens  survived the Staplehurst Rail Crash, The Signal-Man finds an author grappling with trauma and the conflicted feelings of fear and wonder at the new railways, mixed with a desperate yearning to know in advance where danger lies …Reading excerpts from the haunting tale is the fantastic actor and director Oliver DimsdaleOriginal cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd / Original cover headshot of John Bowen © Paul Shields / Illustration "The Signal-Man" (1894) by an unknown author Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsThis episode was originally broadcast on 27th October 2023 Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Prof. Emma Clery - author of The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1762-1800 and Professor of English Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden. They continue this month’s theme of the supernatural, taking you on a journey into the heart of an event that caused a sensation in Georgian London, and would inspire Dickens decades later …The real life story of The Cock Lane Ghost set the stage for an earnest debate between Anglicans and Methodists - the former skeptical the latter credulous towards a spirit realm - where the dead can seek out the living and communicate with them. The alleged haunting in Cock Lane quickly spiralled in the first months of 1762, with many great figures of the age Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole and Prince Edward, Duke of York attending seances to cross examine the ghost. At the heart of the controversy lay the very serious charge of murder that the ghost - known as ‘Scratching Fanny’ - was trying to convince her hearers of, and the very real possibility of the man accused being sent to the gallows.It will come as no surprise to you that Dickens loved this story! Mentioning it not only in articles but in three of his novels - through Mrs Nickleby’s flighty imagination, the disgruntled temper of Mrs Pipchin, and as Prologue to the madness and terror that engulfs A Tale of Two Cities …Joining us to bring to life the real characters from this story - in the form of articles, letters and transcripts - are the fantastic actors Peter Bray and Rachel Winters.Additional Sound Effects in this episode have been used under license from Epidemic SoundsOriginal cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd / Original cover headshot of Emma Clery © Emma Clery / Background Drawing detail of Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism (1762) by William Hogarth, sourced by Wikimedia CommonsThis episode was originally broadcast on 17th November 2025 Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Dr. Emily Bell who guides the listener through the rollercoaster that is Charles Dickens & Wilkie Collins' Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices  - a unique blend of travel writing and ghost stories seen through the eyes of the quintessentially British  characters of Francis Goodchild and Thomas Idle, who amusingly mirror their creators, Dickens and CollinsThis eccentric collection contains within its pages two fantastic ghosts stories - The Dead Hand & The Ghost in the Bride’s Chamber - and other dark flights of fancy that crash in on the everyday. It is a work full of both silliness and mystery and (in spite of its title) the action hardly ever gives in to any idleness ...Reading the excerpts in this episode is the fantastic actor Adam CunisOriginal cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd  / Original cover headshot of Emily Middleton (née Bell) © Dustin Smith, Skywall Photography / Original artwork of The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices by A. J. Goodman (from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition of The Works of Charles Dickens, Vol. 28) sourced by Project GutenbergThis episode was originally broadcast on 20th October 2023 Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

This Halloween Dominic is joined by the inimitable Prof. Andrew Smith who guides us through Dickens' The Black Veil and his latest book Dickens and the Gothic (for Cambridge University Press)Perhaps calling to mind Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black …  The Black Veil  begins with a young man sitting by the fire one winter’s night, with cosy thoughts of Christmas. Out of the corner of his eye the veiled figure of a lady dressed in mourning appears, standing motionless, with eyes fixed on him. As the story unfolds the man - a newly qualified doctor - is compelled to leave his cheerful parlour and head towards a derelict house in an isolated spot, to face whatever is waiting for him there …Returning to the series to read excerpts from Dickens, Radcliffe, Walpole & Thackeray is the brilliant actress: Rebecca TanwenThe 'harpsichord swirl' at the start of the Castle of Otranto reading has been used under license from EPIDEMIC SOUND. All other music and sound has been created by Dominic GerrardOriginal cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd / Original cover headshot of Andrew Smith © Andrew Smith / Original Dickens illustrations sourced from Michael John Goodman's incredible Charles Dickens Illustrated GalleryThis episode was originally broadcast on 31st October 2025 Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Host Dominic announces a new series of Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire! and shares some of his own personal stories of haunting HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!!Original cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd (Background image based on photo of pumpkins © Dominic Gerrard 2017) Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Dominic is joined by Dr Emily Middleton who returns to guide us through Dickens' final Christmas Number ... No Thoroughfare.Written in collobration with Wilkie Collins in the December of 1867 the story is preoccupied with pathways in life that are seemingly blocked or torn away from you: whether it’s a mother searching for her lost child; a young man desirous to marry but prevented by an over-protective guardian; or the sudden drop into a chasm that opens up as you traverse a mountain path in the Swiss Alps …Additional sound effects have been used, with permission, from Epidemic SoundOriginal cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd  / Original cover headshot of Emily Middleton © Dustin Smith, Skywall Photography / Original Dickens illustrations sourced from Michael John Goodman's incredible Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Dr. Joanna Hofer-Robinson and Dr. Pete Orford, for a lively discussion on their new publication The Plays of Charles Dickens .This is the first ever critical edition of Dickens’ plays which include the early farces of The Strange Gentleman, The Village Coquettes, Is She His Wife, Or Something Singular, The Lamplighter … and his later collaborations of Mr Nightingale’s Diary, The Frozen Deep and No Thoroughfare ...Original cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd Original cover headshot of Joanna Hofer-Robinson c/o University of Warwick © Original cover headshot of Pete Orford c/o University of Buckingham © Background watercolour of Interior of St. James Theatre, London (c. 1835) by John Gregory Crace & sourced by Wikimedia CommonsPiano music of John Hullah & Joseph W. Turner played by Dominic GerrardAdditional Sound Effects have been provided under license through Epidemic Sound Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!