Royal Watch News

Prince Charles lays wreath for Charles Dickens

Feb 8, 2012, 13:01 GMT

Prince Charles and Camilla

Prince Charles laid a wreath at the grave of Charles Dickens yesterday (07.02.12).

The British royal led celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the Victorian novelist's birth, laying the flowers on the author's grave in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey where he was buried in 1870.

Other members of the congregation included a number of Charles' relatives and descendants, where Mark Dickens - the great-great-grandson of the writer - gave a reading. Actor Ralph Fiennes who stars as Magwitch in a new film adaptation of 'Great Expectations', read also read an extract, from 'Bleak House'.

Historian Judith Flanders attended the service and said while 'it was enormously moving,' Dickens would not have approved.

She added: 'Dickens said in his will that he wanted no public ceremonies, no statues, no public acknowledgement.'

Before the ceremony, the Prince of Wales and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, visited the Charles Dickens Museum in, Holborn, London, where they were given another reading, by actress Gillian Anderson, who played Miss Havisham in another recent adaptation of 'Great Expectations'.

She said of the royal couple: 'I was very impressed by how relaxed and how much fun they are. They're very funny and like to have a joke.'