Probably the first biography I read as a school boy at Holy Cross Boys School. Managed to find a lovely condition copy at Atomic Collectables, Jim Mc Kevitt's magical emporium in North Street Belfast. The things that man turns up. I remember that this book confused me for some time. I am not quite sure exactly what it was but something in the text and artwork made me think that the characters Dickens wrote about were all real. That he knew Oliver Twist and David Copperfield and that Fagin and Bill Sykes and all the others just lived in different parts of foggy olde London. Perhaps in a sense they were real or at the very least have become something of a memory as opposed to a memory of fiction. The whole world of Victorian London has taken on a dream like quality with the passing of time. Maybe that is all the past becomes when enough time has passed. Reality becomes as intangible as fiction. Or maybe my brain is broke.
