A Christmas Carol Was Written Here: A London Self-Guided Tour

Bloomsbury has more literary ghosts per square mile than almost anywhere else in London. On this walking tour, you'll follow in Charles Dickens's footsteps through the neighborhoods he called home for more than twenty years. You'll also hear how his turbulent family life, childhood poverty, and campaigning journalism shaped the novels that changed the world.

The tour starts outside the Charles Dickens Museum on Doughty Street, where Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839 and wrote early sections of Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers. From there, you'll walk past Coram's Fields – the former Foundling Hospital whose abandoned children helped inspire Oliver's story – and along Great Ormond Street, where Dickens's passionate fundraising helped build the world's first dedicated children's hospital. You'll pass through Queen Square and Tavistock Square, where a grand mansion once housed the Dickens family and Dickens's personal theatre hosted twice-yearly performances for invited audiences.

The route continues north through Fitzrovia, past 22 Cleveland Street where a blue plaque marks one of Dickens's childhood homes, and along Portland Place toward Marylebone. The tour ends at 15 Marylebone Road, near the site of 1 Devonshire Terrace, where Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, in just six weeks, as a furious protest against child poverty.

On this 75-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Hear how Dickens's grief over his infant daughter's death drove him to champion Great Ormond Street Hospital
• Discover the real people behind Tiny Tim, and Scrooge's doorknocker scene
• Learn about Katey Dickens, the celebrated Victorian portrait painter almost erased from art history
• See the Cleveland Street Workhouse, now luxury flats, that inspired Oliver Twist's most harrowing scenes
• Find out how Dickens's separation from his wife Catherine caused a national scandal in 1858
• See the 1960s sculpture relief on Marylebone Road, depicting characters from the novels Dickens wrote when he lived here

This tour is guided by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, Dickens's great-great-great-granddaughter, making it as personal as it is illuminating.