The crossword puzzles in this book focus on the same topics that fascinated Charles Dickens: London, food and drink, childhood, Christmas, love and marriage, and servants.

Ingenious anagrams draw on the amusingly apposite names given by Dickens to his characters, while wordsearch puzzles contain a host of heroes and heroines.

Pursue correctly identified characters through a maze in 'Hunt the Villain' puzzles and identify locations in the novels in 'Place the Place' puzzles. A more complex variation of this type of puzzle draws on Dickens's critical view of the legal profession.

Over a dozen quizzes explore the clothes, work, pets, relations, nicknames, counties, inns, humble clerks and English towns of Dickens's richly detailed world. There is even a quiz on Charles Dickens the man: the self-styled 'Inimitable Boz'.

This charming book offers an entertaining way to re-enter the powerfully imagined world of Dickens, a realm of plum puddings and Christmas punch, icy windows and cosy firesides, starving orphans, tightwads, pickpockets, murderers and cruel teachers.

Test your knowledge, refresh your memory and challenge your ingenuity. If the quizzes and puzzles in this book lead you to reread the inexhaustible novels, so much the better.