Twists and Turns: Exploring the places that inspired Oliver Twist

As a young up and coming writer, Charles Dickens spent many hours wandering the streets of London, observing all he saw and experienced while drawing inspiration from the colourful places and people he encountered.

In 1837, Dickens moved here, to 48 Doughty Street and it was while living in this house that he wrote perhaps his most famous work of all, Oliver Twist!

On this walk we follow in Dickens’s footsteps as he wandered the streets near his home, seeing places and hearing about people and events that inspired him to write Oliver Twist.

We will explore the area long associated with political protest where Oliver is accused of robbing Mr Brownlow as he browses at a bookstall. We walk the streets which once housed some of the worst slums in London and see where Dickens set Fagin’s den of thieves. Discover London’s criminal underbelly of pickpockets, prostitutes and murderers and see the sites of courts, prisons and executions, all of which Dickens saw and wrote about in Oliver Twist.

We discover how the society and politics of Dickens’s London influenced Oliver Twist and led to Dickens becoming regarded as a great social reformer of Victorian England.

This tour starts at the Charles Dickens Museum