Jonathan Jones will be performing dramatised readings of Charles Dickens’ Sikes and Nancy and Doctor Marigold.

Charles Dickens is best known as one of our great Victorian story-tellers. However, he was also a very gifted actor, and throughout his adult life was heavily involved in amateur dramatics. This in turn led to his decision to undertake public readings of his works during the latter part of his career, bringing his various characters to life on the stage through the use of different voices and mannerisms. 

Sikes and Nancy was the last reading he introduced into his repertoire, taken from ‘Oliver Twist’ and involving the violent murder of Nancy at the hands of Bill Sikes, the housebreaker. It was felt by many that the exertion of rehearsing and performing this particular reading greatly contributed to his untimely death at the relatively early age of fifty-eight.

Doctor Marigold was specifically written by Dickens to be performed as a reading, and was to be the only monologue in his repertoire. It tells of a cheap-jack, a travelling salesman, and his unfortunate marriage and loss of his only daughter, but who finds solace when he adopts a deaf and mute orphan girl, whom he names Sophy, and teaches her to communicate through a unique sign language. 

Two contrasting readings. One the most brutal and violent, and the other the most poignant and tearful. Jonathan does full justice to both of these in his dramatised readings.

Tickets are on sale from 10am on Monday 12 January 2026

Jonathan Jones
After early retirement in 2010, following a career spent in IT and Quality Assurance, Jonathan took up a secondary career as a public speaker and performer.

He has now delivered well over one thousand talks/performances, mainly on literary topics but also on his previous role as the Farnham Town Crier, and continues to be a sought after speaker and performer. His talks cover the works of Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Emily Bronte, Laurie Lee, Stanley Holloway, Vera Brittain, Edward Thomas, Dylan Thomas and WW1 Poetry & Remembrance.

Jonathan now regularly performs his one-man play, ‘Rudyard Kipling: Something of Myself’, which he presented at the Farnham Literary Festival in 2024, for the National Trust at Bateman’s, Kipling’s former home in East Sussex. He has also delivered monthly war poetry readings at the National Trust’s Sandham Memorial Chapel near Newbury. He will also be performing this year at the Edward Thomas Festival in Petersfield, at the BilliLit Literary Festival in Billingshurst, West Sussex, and at the Alliance of Literary Societies AGM to be held at Bedales School.