Gradgrind Gradgrind Mr Thomas Gradgrind is the notorious school board Superintendent in Dickens's novel "Hard Times" who is dedicated to the pursuit of profitable enterprise. His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers. In the story, the man himself he was the father of five children, naming them after prominent utilitarians such as Robert Malthus. He also ran a model school where young pupils were treated as machines pitchers which were to be filled to the brim with facts. This satirised Scottish philosopher James Mill who attempted to
Cedric Charles Dickens Cedric Charles Dickens Cedric David Charles Dickens (24 September 1916 – 11 February 2006) was an English author and businessman, and the last surviving great-grandson of Charles Dickens and steward of his literary legacy. Cedric "Ceddy" Dickens was the son of Philip "Pip" Charles Dickens (1887–1964), a chartered accountant and the first secretary of ICI. He was the grandson of Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, the sixth of Dicken’s ten children, a Common Serjeant of London, and the nephew of Admiral Sir Gerald Charles Dickens. He attended Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating in Law in 1935. Following three trips to