The Uncommercial Traveller is the persona of Dickens for this collection of semi-autobiographical sketches. A kind of Victorian blogger, he is funny and affecting by turns as he recounts what he sees and wonders at its meaning. Whether laying bare ‘a wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger’ or musing on the ‘moodiness’ of tom-cats; recounting Mr Indignation Cocker’s sherry bill or simply taking us by the hand as he goes about his ‘no-business’ in London and further afield, he brings the warmth, compassion and fleet-footed wit that infuse his novels. Railways, theatres, chambers, pubs, hospitals, dockyards, the police, mortality, modernisation, memories… fact and fiction blend, and imagination serves to illustrate truths.

In the hands of David Timson, consistently lauded for the ‘true artistry’ (Publishers Weekly) of his narration of Dickens, this is an irresistible curiosity shop all of its own.