Britain marks Dickens’ birthday

Associated Press

LONDON

He wrote about life in the modern city, with its lawyers and criminals, bankers and urchins, dreamers and clerks. He created characters still known to millions — Ebeneezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim, Pip and Miss Havisham, Fagin and Oliver Twist. And it made him a star, mobbed by fans on both sides of the Atlantic.

Britain on Tuesday marked the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, the first global celebrity author and chronicler of a world of urban inequality that looks a lot like the one we live in today.

“You only have to look around our society and everything he wrote about in the 1840s is still relevant,” said Dickens’ biographer, Claire Tomalin. “The great gulf between the rich and poor, corrupt financiers, corrupt Members of Parliament ... you name it, he said it.”

Dickens’ mistrust of the wealthy and compassion for the poor haven’t stopped him being embraced by Britain’s high and mighty.

Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, joined Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, actor Ralph Fiennes, a host of dignitaries and scores of Dickens’ descendants at a memorial service Tuesday in London’s Westminster Abbey.

Historian Judith Flanders, who attended the service, said it was “enormously moving” — and Dickens would have hated it. “Dickens said in his will that he wanted no public ceremonies, no statues, no public acknowledgment,” said Flanders.