If you were choosing a Dickens novel to adapt for the screen, you’d need a really good reason to opt again for Great Expectations. David Lean’s 1946 film, with its spectacular cinematography, is already exquisite, and in 2011, Gillian Anderson …
Britain is haunted by Dickensian ghosts
In the Celtic fringes of Europe, the idea of “thin places” persists — locations where the boundary between this reality and others is claimed to be at its most fragile, even permeable. Originally, these were seen as portals to the …
Claire Keegan’s faithless Christmas Carol
Most modern Christmas “classics” look and feel as fake as a tinsel-draped plastic fir-tree. Though streaming services and Hollywood studios try to persuade us that their latest twist on the Elf who saved Christmas from the Grinch while Santa had …
The elitism of the river Thames
London is a cruel city. Live here long enough, and you will see everything familiar vanish: neighbourhoods transformed, venues closed, old friends moving on. There is just one permanent thing in the capital, one thing that transcends the flux of …
William MacAskill’s ineffective altruism
In Ray Bradbury’s short story, A Sound of Thunder, the anti-hero, Eckels, is a customer of Time Safari, Inc. (“1. You name the animal. 2. We take you there. 3. You shoot it”). The firm promises to take him back …
Poverty is not inevitable
The energy companies are drowning in dollars, while a season of strikes continues to dismay much of the media. Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News talks about “taking on” the trade unions, as though they were a bunch of armed …
Britain’s pawnbrokers are booming
William Hogarth was no fan of pawnbroking. In his 1751 print Gin Lane, he portrayed a Mr Gripe seizing a saw from a carpenter and cooking pots from a housewife in exchange for cash they would fritter on cheap gin. …
Boris Johnson was too Dickensian
Everyone has a character, but some people have more character than others. The British, for example, are blessed with more of it than other Europeans. The Germans have intellect and the French have style, but the British are more dogged, …
Dickens hated Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens hated Oliver Twist. Rarely in English letters do we find a case of an author so embarrassed, so fundamentally ill at ease with his own creation. Oliver spends the first half of the novel crying, begging, whining, and …