The English Association - over 100 years at the forefront of English

Childhood in Bethnal Green - a guided walk, tuning into the voices of children in schools, workhouses, factories, churches and hovels in the area around the Museum- led by Anthony Burton. Time to be confirmed. (Optional, but must be booked in advance as places are limited. Places allocated on a first come-first served basis. WALK NOW WAITING LIST ONLY.)

Charles Dickens and Childhood - Peggy Reynolds, Queen Mary, University of London

Choice of parallel sessions

Dickens and his own children - Lucinda Dickens Hawksley

Dickens and his childhood reading - Ian Brinton

Using Dickens creatively in the Primary Classroom - Morag Styles

Choice of parallel sessions

Illustrating Dickens - Marcia Williams

Portraying Dickens's child characters in film - Tony Williams

English Association Children's Literature Special Interest Group Symposium

Symposium with children's authors on 'What Dickens means to me' - speakers include Mick Manning and Brita Granström, Pip Utton, Marcia Williams and Jacqueline Wilson

Ian Brinton until recently taught at Dulwich College, London. He is the author of A Reader's Guide to Great Expectations (Continuum, 2007) and has taught sessions on Dickens and illustration at English Association conferences and the Prince of Wales's Summer Schools for Teachers of English.

Anthony Burton was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, heading its Museum of Childhood for 15 years.  He was also a Trustee, and latterly Chair of Trustees, of the Charles Dickens Museum, for which he still frequently leads walks.

Lucinda Hawksley is a biographer, author and lecturer and the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. She is a patron of the Charles Dickens Museum.

Perenially popular author/illustrator team Mick Manning and Brita Granström specialise in fun, lively non-fiction picture books. Their book Charles Dickens: Scenes from an Extraordinary Life (Frances Lincoln, 2011) was published to coincide with the 2012 bicentenary of Dickens's birth. They have won many awards, including the Smarties Silver Award and the English Association's English 4-11 Book Award.

Peggy Reynolds is Reader in English at Queen Mary, University of London and a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. She works on literature from the eighteenth century to the present day, especially poetry and the Victorian period.

Michael Slater is Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London, past President of the International Dickens Fellowship and of the Dickens Society of America, and former editor of the journal The Dickensian. He is the author of the critically acclaimed biography Charles Dickens (Yale University Press, 2009).

Morag Styles is Professor of Children’s Poetry at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. Morag divides her time between research and teaching. Her research areas are all within the field of the academic study of children's literature. She has many links with outside organisations which include the British Library, Arts Council, Book Trust, the UK Literacy Association, the International Research Society for Children’s Literature, and the International Board on Books for Young People. She has organised exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam Museum and the British Museum, and numerous international conferences, including The Power of Caribbean Poetry, September 2012. She is Chair of the Philippa Pearce Memorial Steering Committee, a Fellow of Homerton College, and Fellow of the English Association.

Rowan Watson is responsible for special materials in the National Art Library at the V&A, including manuscripts and artists’ books. His recent publication, Western Illuminated Manuscripts(V&A Publishing, 2011), a catalogue of works in the National Art Library from the eleventh to the early twentieth century, with a complete account of the George Reid
Collection, contains a number of major manuscripts dating from the 19th century. To be published next year is his study ‘Art Publishing and the Leisure market from the 1830s to the 1870s’.

Marcia Williams, a former nursery school teacher, blends her storytelling skills and humorous illustrations with well-known figures and stories from literature in a distinctive comic-book style. Her books include Oliver Twist and Other Great Dickens Stories (Walker Books, 2007).

Tony Williams taught English in secondary schools from 1969 to 1997 when he took early retirement. He was Joint Honorary General Secretary of the International Dickens Fellowship from 1999 to 2006 and a Trustee of the Charles Dickens Museum in London at the same time. He was then, and continues to be, Associate Editor of The Dickensian and is a frequent speaker on Dickens in the UK and overseas, to fellowship and other groups, and schools and universities. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow in Humanities at the University of Buckingham working on the 'Dickens Journals Online' project.

Jacqueline Wilson is one of the nation’s favourite authors, and her books are loved and cherished by young readers not only in the UK but all over the world. In 2002 Jacqueline was awarded the OBE for services to literacy in schools and from 2005 to 2007 she was the Children’s Laureate. In 2008 she became Dame Jacqueline Wilson.