Dickens 2012 is British Council’s initiative to celebrate the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Dickens. The British Council is working with over 50 countries worldwide to coordinate an exciting range of educational and cultural events celebrating the bicentenary of the UK's most prolific and influential novelists. To celebrate the bicentenary in India, we had a range of activities.

As part of the celebrations our Reading Rooms at the Jaipur Literature Festival (20-24 January) and Kolkata Book Fair (26-31 January) and our libraries and schools network stocked up on Dickens’s works. Watch authors Vikram Seth and Craig Taylor talk about Dickens and his relevance . The film can be viewed here.

Over 20 countries worldwide from Albania to Zimbabwe are participating in our Dickens film programme which includes silent versions of Oliver Twist and brand new documentaries from Film London. A collection of seven films based on or inspired by Charles Dickens was screened in India.

Five contemporary Indian writers contributed a series of interesting write-ups on our blog. The attempt was to explore the relevance of Dickens in today’s society. Read what Anita Nair, Anjum Hasan, Neel Mukherjee, Sudeep Chakravarti and Chandrahaas Choudhury had to say on our special blog.

In collaboration with Penguin India
We held an all-India creative writing competition in collaboration with publishers Penguin India to encourage writers between the ages of 16 to 21 to submit a creative piece on Dickens. We received 173 entries and six winners were shortlisted. Entries ranged from poetry, short stories, reportage, and writers were asked to be inspired by Dickens or be Dickensian in flavor. It could be a retelling of a Dickens work—it could even be an account of the Victorian writer visiting an Indian city. The idea was to be imaginative, creative and inspired.

The winners were

Winning entries will be uploaded on the Dickens India 2012 blog.

Find out all about our activities in India around Dickens 2012.

For any other information contact us at  Dickens.India@in.britishcouncil.org