A Bit of Dickens

 Well, it's Charles Dickens's birthday today (born 1812). What can one say? He was the best of novelists, he was the worst of novelists, often in the same book, or even the same chapter. I found him early, through A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist, and read him for many years, mostly for pleasure, sometimes as curricular obligation. I think Dickens's greatest gift is for the comic and grotesque, and he is therefore at his best with his comic characters, when he can give full rein to the unparalleled demonic energy of his imagination. And lord, he can be funny, genuinely laugh-aloud funny, even today – of how many Victorian humorists can that be said? For sheer enjoyment, my favourite of all his books is the Pickwick Papers, and my favourite character is the one and only Sam Weller (see here and here). Running him close, though, is Mrs 'Sairey' Gamp, the best thing in Martin Chuzzlewit. Mrs Gamp, the nurse-of-all-trades, with her capacious bag and monstrous umbrella, her imaginary friend Mrs 'Arris, her eye for the main chance and taste for gin, is as tumultuous a force of nature as Sam Weller, and very nearly as funny. For some years, the actress Miriam Margolyes did a brilliant impersonation of the immortal Mrs Gamp. Here she is in action at the Malton Dickens Festival (and it's worth seeking out her one-woman show, Dickens' Women on audiobook)...