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Date: | Sat, 24 Sep 2016 17:41:18 -0700 |
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Friends of the Dickens Forum,
Robert Patten <[log in to unmask]> writes with typical modesty and humor about
R.F. Delderfield's novel *God is an Englishman,* new, we dare say to
most of us. (pjm)
> Dear Patrick and all Dickensians,
>
> ‘Breathes there a man [woman] with soul so dead,
> S/he never to him[/her]self hath said’
> I ought to read R. F. Delderfield?
>
> I’m probably the last living Dickensian who didn’t know that Dickens plays a significant role in Delderfield’s novel God is an Englishman (1970). It’s a pretty good story (a bit wordy!) about an ex-soldier who starts up a haulage buisness in Britain after the Indian mutiny. Dickens is referred to several times as part of the era, but then towards the end of the novel he plays a larger role in an event that changes both Dickens’s life and Adam Swann’s. No spoiler here: but the incident that brings the Swann family and Dickens together is described in minute detail over many pages, and brings that moment in Boz’s life very much to life.
>
> Bob Patten
>
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