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
>