The Latest Breaking News from Charles Dickens

Modern medicine has enabled citizens of wealthy, industrialized nations to forget that children once routinely died in shocking numbers. Teaching 19th-century English literature, I regularly encounter gutting depictions of losing a child, and I am reminded that not knowing the emotional cost of widespread child mortality is a luxury.

Absorbing adaptation is faithful to the original, with sepia lighting and a whiskery, curmudgeonly Scrooge pinching pennies in hard times

Vicar praises stonemasons’ rapid restoration of fictional gravesite, seen in 1984 adaption of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens is often mistakenly credited with inventing modern Christmas. But his writing did give us a unique insight into the ways both ordinary and elite Victorians celebrated the festive season.

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Damage to fictional gravesite, seen in 1984 adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, discovered on Sunday

4/5 This show tugs shamelessly but unsentimentally on the heartstrings, and its message is just as potent as ever

As the stage version of his take on Great Expectations opens in Adelaide, the novelist looks back at a right royal kerfuffle – and a memorable encounter with a London cabby

The actor, who has died at the age of 90, was renowned for his roles on stage an screen

Some of the screenings will be sing-alongs