scrooge one use

What better way to commune with the spirit of Christmas than through Charles Dickens, the author of a story that contains three of them?

The Charles Dickens Museum, in Doughty Street, London, has opened a ‘Dinner with Dickens’ exhibition that explores the role of food in the author’s life and work. Unsurprisingly, Charles was a major foodie, famed across literary London for the swanky food on offer at his soirées. Lucky visitors can admire his posh crockery and a particularly ostentatious silver fruit bowl.

The exhibition offers guests the opportunity to ‘experience the house as either a servant or a guest’ (pro tip: obviously be a guest, put the kids to work as servants), and promises ‘puzzles, smell jars and soundscapes to engage all the senses’. That of course appears to exclude one crucial food-related sense - though, as with the aforementioned forced child labour, a hungry tummy does add to the authenticity of the Victorian experience.

The exhibition runs until April, but if you go before Christmas you can probably tie it in with a performance of A Christmas Carol. God bless us, every one!

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