Wealth and beggary, virtue and vice, repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together’

Wealth and beggary, virtue and vice, repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together’

Could any writer portray London better than Charles Dickens? Dickens knew the city inside out, walking the streets day and night, in all weathers, and drawing inspiration from everything he saw. The fog, the mud, the churning river, the clamour of church bells, and at every corner schemes of business or pleasure – this is Dickens’s London in the company of some of his most memorable characters.

Selected from the work of Charles Dickens