finished reading the superb novel; shall now watch the film.

The book is indescribably magnificent. There are entire paragraphs about the French riots and revolution that could have been written today about last week in Britain.

Extraordinary.

Dickens translates really well,in fact I prefer the translations to the original!

JK..I first realised I was old..when I began to think that the past had a lot to teach us..and Dickens certainly does !

Now I understand why when I was very young my grand mother and grand father seemed to the the ones who thought like me. Children, like very old people know where it's at !

"Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind."

Oh yes; Arab Spring; British Summer; all sides of the same coin.

Stephen Fry told me last week that this is the biggest selling novel of all time and I see he's right - over 200 million!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selli...n_100_million_copies

There's a new biography of Dickens out (I was reading reviews in the Sundays). Looks like a good read.

When I was at school doing GCSE English I had my hopes high we be doing Dickens but we only touched the service of Great Expectations and a clip of the classic movie.

I shocked the class and teachers when I gave them a list of his novels as people only knew Great Expectations, Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist.

The teacher just made us concentrate on Shakespeare I did not like it you cannot read plays as novels and also there is so much speculation with historians that he may not wrote the classics which I pointed out also to my teacher.

These kids need a good dose of David Copperfield, The Outsider by Albert Camus and for a good laugh Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush by Hunter Davies.

Wish they could do The Collector or Lolita with parents approval.

Andrew, totally agree about The Outsider by Albert Camus- studied that in my French 'A' level, many years ago.

How did you get on with it David at your A LEVELS and how long was many years ago ?

andrew wrote:
How did you get on with it David at your A LEVELS and how long was many years ago ?

I thought it was a stunning book, one which was in part responsible for my decision to study French and Spanish literature at university. And since you ask, it was.... ahem! 30 years ago

Back to Dickens and Wikipedia; if Tale of Two Cities sold 200 million copies, how come - in the list of best selling all time authors - is Dickens only credited with total sales of... 200 million? I can't believe nobody's ever read Oliver Twist or A Christmas Carol! Dear old Wikipedia can be very suspect.

JK2006 wrote:
Back to Dickens and Wikipedia; if Tale of Two Cities sold 200 million copies, how come - in the list of best selling all time authors - is Dickens only credited with total sales of... 200 million? I can't believe nobody's ever read Oliver Twist or A Christmas Carol! Dear old Wikipedia can be very suspect.

Can the 200 million figure be true?

Wiki is, after all, edited by all and sundry, so should only be used as a source for further research

In The Know wrote:
JK2006 wrote:
Back to Dickens and Wikipedia; if Tale of Two Cities sold 200 million copies, how come - in the list of best selling all time authors - is Dickens only credited with total sales of... 200 million? I can't believe nobody's ever read Oliver Twist or A Christmas Carol! Dear old Wikipedia can be very suspect.

Can the 200 million figure be true?

Wiki is, after all, edited by all and sundry, so should only be used as a source for further research

Well said,and of course were proper records of sales kept from when these books were released back in the 19th Century?