How dare you Rapparee! Smacked bottom for you! I studied Dickens for A level and then at University, decades ago. I still read him, and get enormous pleasure from his books. I'm re-reading The Cricket on the Hearth just now. My favourite for all these years has to be Bleak House, a very complex and chewy novel. "The waters are out in Lincolnshire..." and that sinister 'spontaneous combustion'. Weird!