A father and son are walking along a path.

They pause as they often do, at the bottom of a hill.

Above them the sun reflects off the windows of a large, elegant house with views across the county, as far as the River Thames.

The boy looks up at the house and says,

Papa, I want to live there someday, to have that house for my own.

His father looks down at him.

One day it might be possible if you were to be very persevering and work very hard.

The man was John Dickens.

The boy, his son, Charles.

Hello and welcome to this brand new series of Legacy.

We're going to be talking about the man who reinvented the novel. For many, he's Britain's

greatest novelist, still selling books by the cartload two centuries on. And he's the author

of some of the greatest and most famous works in the English language. Great Expectations,

a tale of two cities, bleak house, and of course, a Christmas Carol. And he's a man

who's quoted by everyone from Margaret Thatcher to, well, Karl Marx. Arguably, he was the first

international celebrity at a time when it was starting to be possible to spread news globally. He was

mobbed when he toured the United States,

for example, and some think of him as the man who really invented Christmas. Or did he?

Perhaps Charles Dickens is not quite the man, we assume him to be. Is he really the quintessential

Victorian, the pillar of 19th century Englishness,

or did the man who brought the streets of London to life, for so many of us, actually prefer Paris?

Was he, as his daughter said, no gentleman at all?

...