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Charles Dickens, the popular novelist, lived from 1812-70. He was born in Portsea but the family moved to London in 1815, where his father was employed as a clerk in the Admiralty offices in Somerset House.

Charles's parents were married just across the road in St Mary-Le-Strand. When he was just ten his father fell into debt, Charles had to be taken out of school and the family had to move into cheaper accommodation. This and other events in Dickens' young life mirror the fictional world of David Copperfield, a book that is now held to be largely autobiographical.

With his father's creditors becoming ever more impatient, Charles was sent out to work in Warren's blacking factory on The Strand for 6 shillings a week. There he found himself surrounded by desperately poor boys, a situation that may have been the inspiration for Oliver Twist's meeting with Fagin's gang. Things got even worse when Charles's father was sent to prison for non-repayment of debts. Shortly after, his mother and her younger children joined her husband in prison, for want of somewhere to live. Charles moved into lodgings.

Three months later his grandmother died, leaving his father £450, which he used to pay off some of his debts, and he was released from prison. Charles's father took him out of the blacking factory and sent him back to school. This new chance of education was short lived. Two years later the family suffered more financial problems and Charles had to leave school again. So it was, then, at the age of 15, that Charles started work as a solicitor's clerk in Gray's Inn, and for a while he also worked at Staple Inn.

In 1829 Charles became a freelance reporter and soon progressed to being a parliamentary reporter in the Houses of Parliament. By the age of 19 he was bored with rigid journalism and considered becoming an actor. However, he continued to work as a journalist and began writing stories in his spare time. In 1833 his first story was published in a magazine. The rest, as they say, is history.

Though Dickens became a wealthy man, he never forgot what it was like to be poor and never failed in his novels, to warn his readers of the evils of Victorian society. And evils there were; poverty was the norm, pestilence and disease were rife, and infant mortality accounted for half of all deaths.

Dickens knew London intimately (during his life he lived in around 20 different houses in London) and he drew upon his experiences here in many of his novels. Fascinating descriptions of London include his account of the slums of Clerkenwell in Oliver Twist, and a more general view of London in Hard Times. He drank regularly in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese public house, which still exists in Fleet Street.

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