charles barrow's writing

As mentioned in early September, October is all about Victorian literature. In a theme tagged #VicTober on Youtube, where I first learned of it, readers are encouraged to read books written during the Victorian period - 1819-1901 if you wanna get pedantic. Furthermore it has to be by an English writer. BookTubers are reading Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as a group read, but I decided to skip over that as I read a Hardy recently (Under The Greenwood Tree), and had my heart set on reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte instead. I thought I must have read this book before, at school maybe, but no. I didn't recognise large swathes of the story. I definitely knew that I'd seen a film or TV adaptation because I remembered a crucial, very cinematic, plot point that comes right near the end. Anyways, I enjoyed it. It was slow going at times, as classic novels can be. Some of the language is overly flowery - why use one word when you can use ten. Some of the religious and...

I just read Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, for the first time. I thought I knew the story well; I've seen the film (the musical version) many times. I know, I know, the movies are never like the books, they are never as good, read the book. Well I did, and it surprised me. It's much longer and far more involved, plot wise, than I knew, and with many more characters. Oliver, Fagin, The Artful Dodger, Bill Sikes, and Nancy, are some of Dickens' best known characters, and probably some of the best known in any fiction, and I enjoyed spending more time with them (if you can enjoy spending time with thieves, child abusers and murderers). In fact, this story will linger for a long time. Dickens evokes Victorian London and its people better than anyone.

The Hardy Tree can be found in the Old St. Pancras Churchyard in London. It is an Ash tree (Fraxinus Excelsior). It is named for the author Thomas Hardy. Before he gained fame as a novelist he worked as a trainee architect and the task fell to him, in 1865, to relocate the tombs and bodies in this churchyard because the expanding railways needed the land. He re-arranged the headstones around the ash tree as you see them in this photo. Old St. Pancras Churchyard also features in the Charles Dickens novel Tale of Two Cities, written in 1859. Photo is the author's own.