They're selling the desk and chair that Charles Dickens wrote "Great Expectations" on to benefit Great Ormond Street hospital. They estimate it might realise up to £80,000. Is that really such a lot for something with such associations? Obviously it's beyond my budget but in a world where people pay fortunes for football shirts allegedly worn by Michael Owen on one particular Saturday, is it really that much? There are a lot of wealthy individuals and institutions around. This is the desk on which our greatest novelist wrote our greatest novel. This is the ink stain he contemplated as he sucked his pen. This is where he laid his head and probably sucked his thumb when inspiration failed to arrive.Tell you what, I'll put a fiver in to start the ball rolling.
I'm good for fiver too
ReplyDeleteI'd like to ask Stephen Fry to buy it and then make a series of programmes interleaving Dickens' UK travels, or the travels of the characters in his books, with the desk touring Britain's schools, having children sit at it for a day to do their work.
ReplyDeleteNo, really, I would. The title could remain the same.