Peering through the window of Charles Dickens’ Doughty Street study, I wondered if there was anything I could see that he would have seen as he wrote Oliver Twist.

Peering through the window of Charles Dickens’ Doughty Street study, I wondered if there was anything I could see that he would have seen as he wrote Oliver Twist. Certainly not that patch of blue sky rising over the roofs: in winter, the soot and smoke of Victorian London’s million coal fires would have created a perma-smog. He probably wouldn’t have been able to see the wall of his own small backyard. Even on rare clear days, he wouldn’t have seen those beautiful shrubs now gracing the small open area; they were planted quite recently.

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