The UK's first statue of Charles Dickens will be unveiled in Portsmouth in June 2013, the team behind the project has announced. The £118,000 monument commissioned by the Dickens Fellowship was put on hold after insufficient funding was raised. An anonymous benefactor has now underwritten the last £25,000 needed. The statue is set to be unveiled in Portsmouth's Guildhall Square on 9 June 2013, the 133rd anniversary of the author's death.
In his will the Victorian author requested that no statues or monuments of him should be built.
