Nothing and no-one has touched my life like Dickens. For the personal and deepest joy and sadness and love it gave me, 'David Copperfield' - indelible. For the experience of, I would strenuously argue, the greatest novel, artistically speaking, 'Great Expectations'.
He is, for me, equal to Shakespeare. The second tier is under them. And also, he gave us two things I love almost as much: Dostoevsky (whose debt to Dickens is immense); and Christmas (not the debt part - the pretty part, the part I loved with my whole soul when I was a child).
Barkus is willin'
What larks, eh Pip?
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