h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've known people say that it's only worth reading Dickens for social history, but I think they're wrong. His themes are as relevant as ever.

There was a BBC production of Little Dorrit - starring Tom Courtenay as William Dorrit- in the middle of the credit crunch and it couldn't have been more relevant. There was one episode in which Merdle commits suicide, and his financial empire turns out to be fraudulent. The news the next day was of the arrest of Bernard Madoff- and that's a name even Dickens wouldn't have dared to use - on a billion-pound fraud.

Fashions and manners have changed, and Little Dorrit herself won't do as a twenty-first century heroine, but the human heart is the same as ever.

Amen. Nothing is new, they say, there are only so many stories, yadda, yadda...

Never mind that. A good writer is a good writer, and the human condition is always relevant, innit?

Dickens really knew his potatoes.

Have you seen the TV version of Trollope's 'The Way We Live Now'? I found that quite relevant to modern experience - and a whole lot more watchable than the pretentious 2012 garbage we found on Netflix last night.