Dickens Walking Tour

So, this afternoon I took my students on a Dickens-themed walking tour of Clerkenwell and environs. We walked past the old Smithfield meat market, up through St. John's gate to Clerkenwell Green (where Oliver in Oliver Twist witnesses the Artful Doger picking someone's pocket) and poked our head in the Marx memorial library. Next, we strolled past the Peabody Trust buildings-- model tenament housing for the poor built by an American philanthropist in the 1860s-- and past a pub that claims to be the original of the Three Cripples Pub where the characters Bill Sikes and Fagin in Oliver often hung out. Finally, we walked past St. Andrews church and then to the Holbern Bar-- a cool Victorian Gothic building that houses a bust of Dicken and a plaque stating that the author once lived at an inn located on the site.

Tonight we have our BLC lecture on "The Victorians". Should be interesting. Tomorrow we vist the Victoria&Albert Museum....