London is steeped in Dickensian history. Every place he visited, every person he met, would be drawn into his imagination and reappear in a novel. There really are such places as Hanging Sword Alley in Whitefriars Street, ECl (Where Jerry Cruncher lived in A Tale of Two Cities) and Bleeding Heart Yard off Greville Street, ECl (Where the Plornish family lived in Little Dorrit) riley are just the sort of places Dickens would have visited on his frequent nighttime walks. He first came to London as a young boy, and lived at a number of addresses throughout his life, moving as his income and his issue (he had ten children)increased. Of these homes only one remains, at 48 Doughty Street, WC1, now the Dickens House Museum (Tel:405 2127, Mon-Sat 10:00 -17:00, admission ~ 1.50) , and as good a place as any to start your tour of Dickens's London. The Dickens family lived here for only two years—1837 - 1839—but during this brief period, Charles Dickens first achieved great fame as a novelist, finishing Pickwick Papers, and working on Oliver Twist, Barnaby Rudge and Nicholas Nickleby. If you want a house full of atmosphere, you may be a little disappointed, for it is more a collection of Dickensiana than a recreation of a home. Don't let this deter you, however, for this is the place to see manuscripts, first editions, letters, original drawings, as well as furniture, pictures and artifacts from different periods of his life. Just one room, the Drawing Room, has been reconstructed to look as it would have done in 1839, but elsewhere in the house you can see the grandfather lock which belonged to Moses Pickwick and gave the name to Pickwick Papers, the writing table from Gad's Hill, Rochester, on which he wrote his last words of fiction, and the mahogany sideboard he bought in 1839. It was in the back room on the first floor that Dickens's sister-in-law Mary Hogarth died when she was only 17. He loved Mary deeply, probably more than his wife, her sister. The tragedy haunted him for years, and is supposed to have inspired the famous death scene of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. If you walk through Lincoln's Inn Fields, you will come across Portsmouth Street, and a building which, since Dickens's death, has claimed to be the Old Curiosity Shop itself. It is thought to date from 1567, and is the oldest shop in London, but it seems more likely that the real Curiosity Shop was off Leicester Square. Whatever file truth, file shop makes a pleasant change from the many modern buildings which line the street. If you know Dickens's work well, you may like to make your own way around this area, or you may prefer to rely on the experts and join a guided walk. 'City Walks' organize a tour around a part of London which features strongly both in Dickens's early life and his books. This is Southwark, SEI, an area not normally renowned as tourist attraction, but one which is historically fascinating. When the Dickens family first arrived in London, John Dickens, Charles's father, was working in Whitehall. He was the model for Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, so it is not surprising to learn that within a few months he was thrown into the Marshalsea Prison, off Borough High Street, for debt (Micawber was imprisoned in King's Bench Prison which stood on the corner of the Borough Road). The Marshalsea Prison has long gone, but you can stand by the high walls and recall the time that Dickens would go into prison for supper each evening, after a hard and humiliating day sticking labels on pots at the Blacking Warehouse at Hungerford Stairs (near Chafing Cross Station). Off Borough High Street are several small 'alleys called Yards. These mark the sites of the old coaching inns where passengers would catch a stagecoach to destinations around the country. In one, White Hart Yard, stood the White Hart Inn, a tavern that Dickens knew well and in which he decided to intro