John Sutherland of the Financial Times takes a look at the enduring popularity of Charles Dickens and four new books focused on  the Victorian author.

1. Drood: A Novel by Dan Simmons
2. The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl
3. The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits edited by Mike Ashley
4. Mr Dick: Or the Tenth Book by Jean-Pierre Ohl

Charles Dickens is the only British writer to have inspired a theme park – Dickens World, in Kent. Other writers have their festivals, their commemorative plaques, their dusty corners in the Abbey, their statues – even, in the case of Sir Walter Scott, a railway station, “Waverley”, named after his greatest work. But no prose writer has embedded himself so deep in the psyche of his nation as “the Inimitable”, as Dickens immodestly but accurately termed himself.

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