Dickens in America S1:E2

The Passage Out

Miriam Margolyes retraces the route of Charles Dickens' 19th century road-trip though America to find out what has changed in the USA since the great author's visit to the States - and what hasn't.

New England

The Yale University Glee Club serenades Miriam Margolyes as she continues retracing Charles Dickens 's 19th-century road trip through America.

New York

Miriam Margolyes continues retracing Charles Dickens's trip through America and finds herself going out on a night patrol with officers of the NYPD. She also visits Roosevelt Island, makes an unexpected discovery at the New York Public Library and is incarcerated in the notorious "Tombs" prison.

Philadelphia

In Philadelphia Miriam Margolyes finds a city obsessed with Charles Dickens. It still has the "solitary prison" he wrote about, a Dickens Society, a Dickens Drinking Club, his pet raven stuffed and mounted in the local library - and the only life-size statue of Dickens in the world.

Washington and Richmond

Miriam Margolyes meets a pistol-toting Christian minister and prison inmates in Washington DC, "the headquarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva", according to Charles Dickens. There's also a tour of Virginia's tobacco factories.

Pittsburgh to Louisville

Miriam Margolyes follows Dickens's trail inland 1,000 miles along the course of the Ohio River to Louisville, Kentucky, in the company of cowboys. Along the way she is taught how to improve her manners by an American etiquette instructor and attends the Kentucky derby.

The Midwest and St. Louis

Having sailed down the Ohio River on a Mississippi steamboat, Miriam Margolyes arrives in St Louis. She attempts to teach at a high school, visits the inspiration for Martin Chuzzlewit and meets the United Houma Indian Nation on a sacred burial ground.

Canada

Miriam Margolyes crosses the American/Canadian border to meet obsessive Victorian collectors and learns what it took to be a 19th-century lady's maid. Plus a visit to Niagara Falls.

The Journey Home

Before regaling New York's Lincoln Center with anecdotes of her pan-American trip, Miriam Margolyes visits the Shaker community of Mount Lebanon and the army cadets of West Point Military Academy.