Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are fortunately concise novels, but I wonder whether many teenagers now could cope with the rambling expanses of The Pickwick Papers or Bleak House. I suspect Dickens will stay with us, but it will be more because of university syllabuses and moving pictures (the irony of Dickens's work is that although he was an incorrigible ham actor and his novels have strong "theatrical" elements that flourish brilliantly on the screen, he couldn't write successfully for the stage — a very common failing among novelists).

The shortcoming that most of us would ascribe to Dickens's novels, the genius at describing childhood and its fears, yet the strange tweeness and absence of genitalia in his adults, is one of which Dickens was very aware. Dickens was a frequent visitor to France and was jealous of the freedom enjoyed by someone like Balzac, who could depict with much greater candour the sexual escapades of French society.

Dickens was a conspicuous campaigner against social ills, and the modern liberal belief that crime can only stem from a lack of opportunity or justice is writ large in his work and in that of George Eliot. The do-gooders of the Victorian era believed that decent housing, healthcare and education could more or less eradicate evil. 

One wonders what Dickens would have made of our contemporary looters. Where's the grievance? he might ask. What's the problem? The free education? The free healthcare? The free housing? The free legal representation? The cheque at the end of the week for doing nothing but watching daytime television?