It’s a very warm Friday here in Inverness and I am sitting inside in the cool shade of my bedroom on my laptop.

Recently I have been reading the classic books of the brilliant Charles Dickens. I mostly read them when I am sitting around in the shop where I work.

I have read the majority of Great Expectations, some of A Tale of Two Cities and some of Oliver Twist. I myself own hundreds of books and I have easy access (a town centre flat) to all the local charity shops where there is always something to read for a pound or so. So what I mean to say is I don’t like spending time reading content I am not enjoying.

But anyway to get back to the point of this blog post. Charles Dickens published a chapter or so of his books in each installment of his magazine at the time. This period was the Victorian period. The period after we, British, beat the French in the Napoleonic wars (with the help of various other Europeans) and experienced a sort of golden age of economic growth and prosperity. I believe Charles Dickens books take place just before the industrial revolution. That is there is no railways or mass producing factories in his books. In a Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations the mode of transport is very much still horse with cart. Obviously A Tale of Two Cities takes place during the French Revolution (after which Napoleon came to power and initiated the Napoleonic wars). Similarly Oliver Twist is also pre industrial England and London.

I won’t spend much time explaining the plot of the three books since they are so well known to the British (and world) public.

One of the most striking things of Dicken’s work is how the humour and language is so similar to how it is now. His characters are reserved in their language and behaviour. I’m thinking of the various upper class characters in Great Expectations (Pip, Estrella, Mr Jaggers, Wemmick, Miss Havisham).

This is the same in 2025 with comedy such as Rowan Atkinson in Mr Bean and Faulty Towers with John Cleeves. You can easily see the difference between British comedy (such as these) and American comedy such as Family Guy or the Simpsons where the laughter is more overt and direct. 

The comedy was very apparent to me such as Mr Jagger’s (the lawyer) behaviour in the courtroom when Pip first goes to London. Or when the graverobber (Mr Cruncher) chastises his son when he sees the funeral procession in London. The humour didn’t feel unlike modern British humour from comedy greats such as Faulty Towers. 

Amusingly, the people in charge, the judiciary, the police, as always, are indifferent and seemingly incompetent like when Oliver Twist when he gets ‘caught’ pickpocketing and taken to court. Or like when the French spy in a Tale of Two Cities is exonerated near the beginning for providing information to the French and American armed forces to help them win the war (spoiler, he is a spy).

There is something that attracts me about the way Dickens writes about England and London. Although he often writes with comedy there is real affection there too. Nowadays there is constant lamenting and complaining of how Britain is in decline in literature. The difference is refreshing.

Of course Dickens books have an educational aspect too. Children’s lives (especially lower class) were much tougher before the early twentieth century reforms whereby they were all guaranteed schooling. You don’t need to read Oliver Twist to know the story of the workhouses and the difficult of being an orphan and then living among pickpockets in London. That’s a theme in Dicken’s work, the treatment of children and their living conditions, which is reflected across all three of the books.

Dicken’s too explores class differences, such as when Pip receives money in Great Expectations and drops Biddy and his brother in law (Joe Gargery). The class system is made clear. Estrella his female love interest encourages Pip to separate himself from his humble working class roots. For a while the money and higher society completely goes to Pip’s head but ultimately he is brought back down to earth when his benefactor is revealed as Magwitch the convict. In a Tale of Two cities Lucie Manette is courted by various men and shown to be upper class. She lives a life of luxury in London. These characters are contrasted with the Cruncher household (the graverobber father in A Tale of Two Cities) where physical abuse and ignorance is rife. Oliver Twist grows up in the workhouses but ends up in the house of the kind Mr Brownlow whose servants nurse him back to health and who act as the voice of reason and wisdom in his life.

Ultimately I enjoyed reading Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. I enjoyed the British comedy, the use of British language, the historic backdrop and also I enjoyed the educational aspect of the book with regard to living conditions of the lower classes and children of the time.