Just as Scrooge wandered London's streets on a cold Christmas night, Dan Snow follows the ghosts of Charles Dickens' past to discover the city that inspired his greatest works. With London-born tour guide David Charnick, they slip down hidden alleyways to find the old debtor's prison that the Dicken's family once called home; a place that haunted a young Charles for the rest of his life. They overlook the Thames to tell the tales of Victorian scavengers who searched the murky waters for bodies to turn over for profit. They find the old counting houses and graveyards that inspired the creation of Ebenezer Scrooge. They walk down the very street that Bob Cratchit 'went down a slide on Cornhill twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve'. With David's masterful guidance and atmospheric readings, this immersive episode takes you to the fireside of a London coaching inn as the sun sets outside on a late December afternoon.
A warning: this episode contains references to historical suicides.
Dickens' extracts are read by Robyn Wilson. 'Roger de Coverley' and 'Durang's Hornpipe' performed by Vivian and Phil Williams. You can join David for a variety of historical London tours here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/david-charnick-footprints-of-london-7320403619
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