Two hundred years on from his birth, how close is Charles Dickens to you? Do Pip and Peggotty, Carton and Copperfield, Pumblechook, Squeers, and Creakle have a place in your mind? Do you need Dickens as you need food and drink? I should hope so. God knows, the cruelties and iniquities Dickens devoted himself to savaging with unsparing antic fury are still with us today, and not embalmed behind some vitrine of Victoriana.