Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Portsmouth in Hampshire, the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786 – 1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow, 1789 – 1863) on February 7 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town in London.

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Do you know who Shakespeare is? Do you know any of his works? Read about him and let’s have a look at one of his most famous tragedies: Hamlet.

William Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shaksper and Shake-speare, as spelling in Elizabethan times was not fixed and absolute)[1] was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman from Snitterfield, and of Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. They lived on Henley Street, having married around 1557.

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