'Mrs Dickens' by Emily Howes
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I founded Ornot in 2013. I think the best thing about Shopify is that we can practice business without technical skills. We can manage the company's background and front-end and sell online. If Shopify was a bicycle, it would be a bicycle itself. That way, things are handled and our business is handled in Shopify. Start a free trial at shopify.com. Now, this is The Radio 2 Book Club with Sarah Cox.
Well, hello there. Yes, it's me. We're back with another Radio 2 Book Club pod. I have a public service announcement. The Crossed Wires Podcast Festival in Sheffield is back. And it's bigger and better than ever. From Thursday, 2nd of July to Sunday, 5th of July, BBC Sounds and Radio 4 Fringe are treating podcast listeners to an exciting line-up of shows, all for free, including this very podcast. I'll be chatting to international bestselling author Lisa Jewell at Coal Brothers in Sheffield City Centre on Friday 3rd July at 10am. Bright and early. For the full list of programmes and to get free tickets for this special edition of the Radio 2 Book Club, that's right, free tickets. It's all free, all across the festival.
Do visit crossedwires.live forward slash fringe. If you can't remember that, just Google Crossed Wires Festival. It'll pop up, won't it? We hope to see some of you there, and don't worry if you can't get to Sheffield or take time off work, we will be recording the whole thing so you'll be able to catch it on BBC Sounds. Right, time to tell you about our latest Radio 2 Book Club choice. It's called Mrs Dickens and is a fictional telling of the life of Kate Hogarth, who became Charles Dickens' wife and the mother of his many, many children. It's written by performer, director and award-winning author Emily Howes. who I'm very pleased to say joins me now in the studio to tell us all about the novel. Welcome back to the Radio 2 Book Club, Emily.
Lovely to be here. Thanks for having me. Enjoying the red lip. Very strong. Well, thank you very much. I was very envious of women who can get away with a red lip. It looks so cool with your dark hair. You were last done in 2024 for your debut, The Painter's Daughter. Did, gosh, did you start writing this book immediately then after you'd finished? Did you like neck a glass of champagne at the launch and then just crack on with work?
Yeah, I'd started it even before that, I think. Yeah, when I even got the very first book, I already had this idea for the book that I wanted to write. And I went to the publisher with it, desperate to write it. So I think we announced both of them at the same time, must be three or four years ago now.
And introduce us to Kate then, please, on Mrs. Dickens and set up what's going on.
Well, Kate is the wife of Charles, of course, the famous writer. She's really not particularly well known in her own right. And I think that's how Dickens wanted it. One of the things I discovered as I was researching the book is that he just, I mean, he essentially launched a smear campaign against her. It was quite a brutal smear campaign and really effective because even up until probably the last 10 or 20 years, it was still the received version of Kate's life that she was kind Fat and boring and dull and not very clever.
Well, after they split up, acrimoniously parted ways and then he did all this.
Yes, they were married for 22 years and they had 10 children together. And after 22 years, he left her for the actress Ellen Ternan, which is a bit more well known. There was a film called The Invisible Woman, which had Felicity Jones and Ralph Fiennes in it. And I was partly watching that that made me want to write about Kate because their love story is front and centre and it's quite a Hollywood look, I suppose. It's kind of centred on their love story. And in it, Kate is very much cast in the way that Dickens wrote about her towards the end of their marriage. He said that his marriage was a blank, that it was a page with no words upon it or something like that. He just tried to eradicate her completely from his life.
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