Great Expectations

He's a marvellous writer... He's very, very good

He's a marvellous writer... He's very, very good

A story of the traumas of sex and class. My favourite moment is the one where Magwitch makes his stumbling way up the shadowy staircase towards an unnerved but unsuspecting Pip: the halting but inexorable rise of the repressed 'from the darkness beneath

The defects in [ Great Expectations ] are as nearly imperceptible as spots on the sun or shadows on a sunlit sea

I would always prefer to go get another Dickens off the shelf than pick up a new book by someone I've not read yet... I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive

Charles Dickens was born in Hampshire on February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended up in financial troubles. When Dickens was twelve years old he was send to work in a shoe polish factory because his family had been taken to the debtors' prison. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays began to appear in periodicals. The Pickwick Papers , his first commercial success, was published in 1836. The serialisation of Oliver Twist began in 1837. Many other novels followed and The Old Curiosity Shop brought Dickens international fame and he became a celebrity in America as well as Britain. Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.