Let’s have a drink with Charles Dickens (or AuthorHouse UK has a drink with Charles Dickens)

AuthorHouse UK celebrates this 200th anniversary year of the great Charles John Huffam Dickens birth with a stroll round the pubs and places of London, that the great author himself was known to frequent. As we know many of his books are either totally or partly based in Victorian London, such as Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.

Let us walk the streets of London through the eyes of the great man himself, where he must have drawn much of his inspiration for scenes, plots and characters. Let us imagine the places where the Victorian novelist lived and worked, and where he conjured up his books. As Dickens himself was a well-known customer in a number of London public houses he must of took great breaths of Victorian London, that great melting pot of your great and the good, the poor (many in dire poverty) and of course he must have noticed all those cheeky urchins and barrow boys – think The Artful Dodger-  and maybe the inspiration for Fagin was conceived by spotting the many evil-looking, grasping villainous types that would have been hanging round the alleys and street ends that made up the labyrinth that the City was then.

One thing most of these, sometimes unfortunate, but always colourful characters had in common, though, was the love of a good drink.-be it beer or gin.

Fortunately some things in the City of London haven’t changed that much since Dickens days and some of his choice watering holes are still there. Let us take a closer look at two of them that Dickens was known to frequent.

The Lamb & Flag in Covent Garden, once so rough it was called the Bucket of Blood, was a particular haunt of the great writer. It’s still like it was in his day- old, lots of wood, fascinating, however now no longer a hub of bare-knuckle scrapping.

Elsewhere, there’s Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese - one of the oldest pubs in London (hidden away down a tiny alley of Fleet Street)-and it's alluded to in Dickens 'A Tale of Two Cities’. Inside, it's still dimly-lit and seems unchanged as it is a maze-like pub with narrow walkways, numerous nooks, crannies and tiny dining rooms - this is where Dickens used to put away a few frothy ones during his time as a journalist.

AuthorHouseUK reviews hopes you have enjoyed this walk down memory lane and if ever in London, enjoy a pint where the great author drank.