Who is Timothy Dickinson?
Walk down a quiet Georgetown street on any afternoon and you may be rewarded with the sight of a striking figure: a plump man in his mid-60s with tousled hair, wearing a rumpled spencer-coat, torn striped trousers and a white blossom in his lapel, with a rosewood cane clutched at his side. Approach him and ask the simple question: "what's on your mind?" The cheery response might be the details of a 19th century incident in which the French consul in Algiers was shot out of a pirate's cannon. Or perhaps it will be the story of the German Duke who believed he had turned into glass and thus refused to shake anyone's hand lest his own "break off." Or perhaps it will be the reported claim that Henry Thoreau's final deathbed exclamation spoken was the cryptic "Moose Indians!" Whatever the case, the chosen story will be only the first in a relentless onslaught that bounces unpredictably between countries, centuries and characters with neither rest nor dull moment in between.
Welcome to the extraordinary mind of Timothy Dickinson: raconteur, bon-vivant, advice-giver and expert conversationalist. "Let's just say I'm an antiquarian who finds good exercise in having his brain picked," he says with typical modesty. In reality he is an overflowing fountain of arcane and hilarious stories of true history, the result of a lifelong habit of voracious reading. A longtime resident of Georgetown, Timothy makes his living as a freelance "literary advisor", helping out various unnamed authors and pundits with their articles and books and cadging the occasional free meal along the way. In his free time, he likes nothing better than holding court at his favorite Georgetown pub and choosing a favorite Great and Telling Tale from his never-ending supply.
As the late writer George Plimpton once said, "I always come away from Timothy keenly aware of the empty stretches in my own brain, knowing that if his is a cluttered bibliotheque-like vaulted chamber with balconies, great banks of volumes rising up, mine suffers badly in comparison--a broom closet off a corridor, a can of paint on a shelf."
Indeed, Timothy's palatial mind could make any of us feel that way. Yet spend just a little time in the presence of this unassuming man and be amazed at not only the breadth of his knowledge but the depth of his old-world graciousness, both being the reason so many Georgetown homes (and their refrigerators) remain perpetually open to him. In an age when most knowledge is an impersonal click away, Timothy is the real deal: a first-rate Storyteller of the highest order, one whose tales only benefit from the added fact of being true. As Mr. Plimpton once said, "To know Timothy is to be given a passport gratis to the remarkable country of his knowledge." » Watch Video
