Cedric Charles Dickens the Caribbean by banana boat, Dickens joined the British Tabulating Machine Company in 1937. Dickens joined the RNVR on the outbreak of World War II in 1939, leaving the Royal Navy in 1946 as a First Lieutenant. While serving in Portsmouth he met his wife Elizabeth Mary Blake (1913–2008), who was serving as a WREN, and whom he married in 1948. After leaving the Royal Navy, Dickens returned to his old firm, which eventually became ICL, and where he became Director of Communication. He was a lifelong supporter of the Charles Dickens Museum in Holborn. He was twice President of
Dickens in America but also reading other writers' travel books that Dickens himself read before sailing. These include Frances Trollope's and de Tocqueville's books. She visits the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where the original manuscript is kept, and marvels over all the changes and corrections in Dickens's hand that cover every page. She notices that the closing paragraph of the manuscript as published originally had another sentence at the end but it has been crossed out in such a way that she can't read it. Miriam then meets with Dickens scholars and experts at the Charles Dickens Museum on Doughty Street