Gerald Charles Dickens (actor) his own British and American tours, Gerald Dickens performs extracts from "The Pickwick Papers", "David Copperfield", "Oliver Twist", "Great Expectations", "Nicholas Nickleby" and "A Christmas Carol" among others, in the latter creating 26 characters in a performance described by "The New York Times" as "a once in a lifetime brush with literary history." Dickens has recorded unabridged audiobooks of "The Pickwick Papers" and "Nicholas Nickleby". In December 2011 he appeared on the BBC's "Songs of Praise". A keen golfer, he wrote and performs the two-act play "Top Hole!", based on four golfing stories by P. G. Wodehouse. In 2015 at
Great Expectations (1860–1). "Great Expectations" begins around 1812 (the date of Dickens' birth), continues until around 1830–1835, and then jumps to around 1840–1845, during which the Great Western Railway was built. Though readers today will not notice this, Dickens uses various things to emphasise the differences between 1861 and this earlier period. Among these details—that contemporary readers would have recognised—are the one pound note (in chapter 10) that the Bank Notes Act 1826 had removed from circulation; likewise, the death penalty for deported felons who returned to Britain was abolished in 1835. The gallows erected in the swamps, designed to display a