Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani – on-screen lovers in BBC Three sitcom Him And Her - will be appearing to read extracts from Ovid’s hilarious poetic elegy The Art of Love.

They’ll be joining Niamh Cusack and War Horse’s Tom Hiddleston, who will be reading The Courtship of Mr Lyon by Angela Carter and Tennessee Williams’s The Kingdom of Heaven respectively. 

With a star-studded and jam packed guest list and some wonderful and definitely unconventional Valentine’s day fare being read aloud,  it promises to be another absolutely brilliant event.

Get your tickets now – they’re available from the Criterion Box Office, online or by calling 0844 8471778. Tickets cost £12.50/£10 for GIR members/concessions.

A staggering 92% of audience members who responded to our feedback forms said that they enjoyed the event ‘very much’ (with nobody ticking the ‘not very much’ or ‘not at all boxes’) – and given the array of talented readers and incredibly entertaining performers, it’s not hard to see why we got such an enthusiastic response.

Indeed, there was a lot on offer to enjoy and we’re thrilled to say that every aspect went down a storm – it’s especially heartening to find that 93% of audience respondents said they enjoyed the readings most; given that reading aloud is at the very heart of the Dickensian tradition the Penny Readings adheres to, it’s brilliant to know that it is as timeless as ever (we like to think that Dickens would be very proud indeed).

Plus we had lots of wonderful comments too:

So worth the trip, you were all brilliant. What a buzz and what connections!

A great afternoon’s real entertainment.

Interesting to see the other people who came and the enthusiasm.

A really enjoyable afternoon.

Absolutely fantastic. Here’s hoping there will be many more Penny Readings in the future…

(Also, you can read a first-hand audience perspective of the event on this lovely blog: Mrs Miniver’s Daughter)

We celebrated both Dickens’ bicentenary, and the expansion of our Get Into Reading groups across the capital, with a truly magical line-up of readers, comedy, and music which had the audiences in stitches one minute, and tearful the next. The British Library provided a suitably literary venue and Vintage gave everyone a free Dickens novel to take home with them. No wonder the public tickets sold out in a day!

Charles Dickens casts a critical eye over proceedings

Whilst a portrait of the great man himself looked down on us, his actual DNA appeared on stage in the form of Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, his great-great-great granddaughter, who apologised for reading A Tale of Two Cities from a well-loved paperback rather than a precious family heirloom. This made no difference to the quality of her performance, however; all of our readers left the audience in spellbound silence. 

The wonderful AS Byatt read the opening to Great Expectations, reminiscing about the effect it had on her as a child and delivering Magwitch’s threats with relish. It might be January, but our own Phil Davis’ portrayal of the loving Cratchitt family in A Christmas Carol  still kindled a warm and fuzzy feeling, whilst  Angela Macmillan movingly recreated Peggotty’s loyalty and devotion to the young David Copperfield, leaving one audience member ‘weeping like a burst water pipe’.

Ida Barr does her thing

TRO's Director Jane Davis and Tweedy the Clown

 Judging by the enthusiastic response from the audience and the reaction on Twitter, the event was an enormous success:

“I didn’t know I could be entertained like that”

“Clowns, cowbells, magicians and AS Byatt should be mixed more often!”

“Pure joy”

Dickens himself was a consummate entertainer and would surely have approved of the eclectic line-up, a perfect mix of comedy and pathos, just like the novels we were there to celebrate.

A big thank you to everyone who was involved and made it such a special event. If you came along, we’d love to hear your thoughts so please leave a comment below.

Don’t worry if you didn’t make it this time around – we will be back in Liverpool as usual in December and fingers crossed our London escapades will be the first of many!

From Pip to Potter: Celebrating the Place of Children in Care in Literature will take an insightful look at the representation of cared for children in a range of well-loved literature – some of the best loved literary characters are children who are living away from home (Peter Pan, Harry Potter, Lyra Belacqua in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy) and an esteemed panel, including representatives from The Reader Organisation, will gather to discuss these cared-for heroes in the context of a system where children in care can experience stigma.

Poet Lemn Sissay, who has personal experience of the care system, will lead the discussion, and will be joined by Rose Griffiths, founder of The Letterbox Club and poet Caroline Bird who will be representing the work of First Story, which fosters creativity, literacy and talent in hard-to-reach young people.

The Reader Organisation can testify to the significance of reading with looked-after children, and this stimulating event promises to highlight the importance of literature in the lives of cared-for children.

From Pip To Potter: Celebrating the Place of Children in Care in Literature
Sunday 19th February, 5pm, Level 5 Function Room
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

The event is free but requires a ticket and a small booking charge will apply. You can reserve your ticket online on the Southbank Centre website (£1.75 transaction fee) or by phone on 0844 847 9910 (£2.75 transaction fee). You can also book your ticket without transaction fees by visiting one of the Southbank Centre’s ticketing offices in person.

On the evening of Friday 10th February, the Criterion Theatre in London will play host to an evening of Twisted Love – an anti-Valentine’s collection of unlikely love stories. Niamh Cusack will read Angela Carter’s The Courtship of Mr Lyon and Tom Hiddleston – star of Stephen Spielberg’s blockbusting take on War Horse – will be reading the erotic Tennessee Williams short story The Kingdom of Heaven.

The Reader Organisation is delighted to once more be partnering the event alongside the Criterion and Vintage Classics, bringing the brilliant tradition of bedtime stories to the heartland of London theatre and sharing with the audience the sensation of reading aloud. So it’s fair to say we’re very much looking forward to the evening’s distinctly different take on the Valentine’s theme – as is one of the evening’s star guests, Tom Hiddleston:

The prospect of standing on that beautiful stage and reading well-written stories aloud, in particular, is one that excites me. And given that everything that night will be geared at couples on dates, an evening of twisted love sounds like the right antidote.

Stories Before Bedtime TWO: Twisted Love
Friday 10th February, 10.30pm
Criterion Theatre, 218-223 Piccadilly, Piccadilly Circus, London, W1V 9LB

Tickets: £12.50 (£10 GIR member/concessions available in person the Criterion Box Office)

Book your tickets online or call 0844 8471778.

Forget flowers and chocolates – a night of reading is a considerably better and much longer lasting gift for your loved one to enjoy.

Over the next couple of months, open Read To Lead courses will be coming to Northern Ireland, Barnsley and London – any individual is eligible to sign up and take part. So if you want to share the joys of shared reading in your community or perhaps if your New Year’s resolution is to do something different to make a difference then being part of Read To Lead and becoming a trained shared reading facilitator is  for you.

And if you want to celebrate Dickens’ bicentenary in unique but what would surely be Dickens-approved style, there could be no better way to do so than to embark on a  Read To Lead course. We could all take a tip from the young David Copperfield:

This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always arises in my mind of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.

On a Read To Lead course you’ll find that reading is indeed for life and full of life.

Read To Lead Northern Ireland
Holywood Library, BT18 9AE
3rd, 10th, 17th February; 10am-4pm
(This course takes place over Dickens’ bicentenary, so there may just be some Dickens on offer to read…!)

Read To Lead Barnsley
Barnsley Digital Media Centre, S70 2JW
8th, 15th, 22nd February; 10am-4pm

Read To Lead London
Central Venue TBC
12th, 19th, 26th March; 10am-4pm 

For more information on any of these courses, please contact Jessica Reeves on 0151 207 7221/jessicareeves@thereader.org.uk or Casi Dylan on 0141 357 1738/casidylan@thereader.org.uk . You can also download a booking form in Word or PDF formats.

Alongside Dr. Josie Billington, Research Associate at the School of English, University of Liverpool and Deputy Director of our research partner Centre for Research Into Reading, Information and Linguistic Systems (CRILS), Jane will be leading an interactive workshop on Reading For Wellbeing at the event; one of several which will provide the opportunity for participants to learn about ongoing arts and wellbeing projects – such as Get Into Reading – from leading arts for health practitioners.

The conference will give those involved in public health, the arts and community development the chance to reflect upon the achievements of arts and health collaborations to date, examine the growing evidence-base for the value of creative activity within the areas of health and wellbeing in the UK and internationally and look forward to future opportunities and challenges.

The event is sold out  but for more information about the Royal Society of Public Health and for other upcoming events, please visit the RSPH website.

All tickets to the hottest public reading event in London town on Sunday 22nd January 2012  have now sold out. Congratulations if you managed to snap up a ticket to what promises to be an amazing show and commisserations if you weren’t able to. We’re delighted that the event has proved so successful in such a short space of time. Dickens would be proud!

The British Library are taking overflow bookings in case of cancellations/no shows, but unfortunately there are no guarantees of a ticket. We’ll see you there!

The Reader Organisation is teaming up with Vintage Classics and the British Library to bring the famous Penny Readings to London for the first time. As we expand the reach of our Get Into Reading project across the city, bringing people together through shared reading, we thought it was about time that the event which has been unmissable in Liverpool for the last eight years should travel with us too.

Costing only a penny to attend, large public readings happened all across Victorian England, and Dickens himself toured Britain giving readings (although he charged slightly more for his – something like £20-30 in today’s money!). We’ve conflated the two to bring you the quality of Dickens’ readings at the bargain cost of only one penny – the Penny Readings!

The Penny Readings marks the beginning of his bicentennial year and will feature a fantastic ensemble of writers, musicians, magicians and readers, including authors AS Byatt and Louis de Bernières, and comedian Arthur Smith.

It will take place on Sunday 22^nd January from 2pm-4:30pm and each ticket holder will also receive a copy of a Dickens novel published by Vintage Classics, for a donation of just one penny.

Jane Davis MBE, Founder and Director of The Reader Organisation says: ‘Dickens’ vision was so generous and energetic and we’re really looking forward to kicking off his bicentenary celebrations with our first Penny Readings event in London. We’ve got an exciting line-up of readers and performers coming together to celebrate the vitality of his work in the beautiful surroundings of the British Library. It’s going to be a magical event.’

The Penny Readings event at the British Library will also feature Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, author, speaker and great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens; BAFTA award-winning actress Anna Maxwell Martin who starred in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House; ‘music hall legend’ Ida Barr, Tweedy the clown, and award winning magician Romany, with more guests to be announced. As well as an afternoon of readings and entertainment, the audience can also visit the recently opened exhibition ‘A Hankering after Ghosts: Charles Dickens and the Supernatural’ which runs until 4 March at the British Library and explains Dickens’ fascination with the supernatural, which influenced his ghost stories such as A Christmas Carol.

London Get Into Reading group members should contact their group faciliator, whilst the general public can reserve tickets here: http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event127220.html.

See you there!