Harry Lloyd a great-great-great-grandson of Victorian writer Charles Dickens through his mother, who is the daughter of Captain Peter Dickens, RN. One of his maternal great-grandfathers was Rear-Admiral Henry Blagrove. He is a cousin of biographer and writer Lucinda Hawksley, and actor and performer Gerald Dickens. Lloyd was educated at Eton College and, while there, made his television debut at the age of 16 as James Steerforth in the BBC's 1999 adaptation of "David Copperfield" opposite Daniel Radcliffe. In 2002, he was cast as young Rivers in "Goodbye Mr Chips". He went on to study English at Christ Church, Oxford, where he
Charles Dickens single day. His favourite actor was Charles Mathews, and Dickens learnt his "monopolylogues", (farces in which Mathews played every character), by heart. Then, having learned Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons, and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years. This education was to inform works such as "Nicholas Nickleby", "Dombey and Son", and especially "Bleak House"—whose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much