Charles Dickens Dickens enjoyed reading as a youth. Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time, and remains one of the best-known and most-read of English authors. His works have never gone out of print, and have been adapted continually for the screen since the invention of cinema, with at least 200 motion pictures and TV adaptations based on Dickens's works documented. Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime, and as early as 1913, a silent film of "The Pickwick Papers" was made. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded
Sam Weller Widdowson Game. He later became a football referee and was in charge of the first ever match in which goal nets were used. He was Nottingham Forest chairman from 1879 to 1884. Sam Weller Widdowson Sam Weller Widdowson (born Hucknall Torkard, 16 April 1851, died Beeston, 9 May 1927) was an English sportsman of the Victorian era. He played cricket for Nottinghamshire and association football for Nottingham Forest and also played once for the England national football team, against Scotland in 1880. Widdowson is also credited with inventing football shin pads in 1874 when he cut down a pair of cricket