Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire! 🔥

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 Sound
Original 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 domain
This episode was originally broadcast on 5th November 2025
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If 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/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank 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 Sound
Original 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 Commons
This episode was originally broadcast on 8th November 2025
Support the show
If 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/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank 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 Gallery
This reading was originally broadcast on 31st October 2025
Support the show
If 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/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank 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-Man

Written 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 Dimsdale
Original 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 Commons
This episode was originally broadcast on 27th October 2023
Support the show
If 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/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank 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 Sounds
Original 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 Commons
This episode was originally broadcast on 17th November 2025

Support the show
If 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/dominicgerrard

Thank you so much!

Host: Dominic Gerrard
Series Artwork: Léna Gibert
Original Music: Dominic Gerrard

Thank you for listening!