Happy Birthday Charlie

Charles Dickens turns 200 today - or he would have were he still alive.   With my admittedly plebeian tastes in literature, Dickens and Twain are a complete banquet.

"You only have to look around our society and everything he wrote about in the 1840s is still relevant," said Dickens' biographer, Claire Tomalin. "The great gulf between the rich and poor, corrupt financiers, corrupt Members of Parliament ... You name it, he said it."

Dickens Workhouse Saved

It doesn't look like much but this was an 18th century workhouse said to have inspired Charles Dickens to write Oliver Twist.    At the time, a young Dickens lived just nine doors away.

The run down building had been slated for demolition but Britain's Heritage Minister intervened at the last minute to preserve what he described as  "an eloquent reminder of one of the grimmer aspects of London's 18th-century history''.