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
History of the British penny (1714–1901) public were dissatisfied by the state of the copper coinage. Much of it was worn or defaced by advertisements, and 14 percent of the pennies in commerce were Boulton's 1797 cartwheels. The fact that pennies of different specifications circulated side by side precluded the weighing of quantities of copper coin to ascertain the value. Both sorts of pennies were deemed too heavy for daily use. The copper coins were so heavy that Charles Dickens in "Nicholas Nickleby" had Mr Mantalini contemplate suicide by drowning himself in the Thames, his pockets filled with halfpennies. Thomas Graham, the Master of the Mint,