"The excellent George Cole follows a powerful act: when Dickens read 'The Chimes' aloud to his guests, the actor Macready sat 'undisguisedly sobbing' on the sofa."

Rachel Redford - The Observer

The second of Dickens’ five Christmas novels, The Chimes is filled with an array of comic characters. It tells the story of Toby Veck, a humble porter whose loses his faith in human nature at the hands of his presumed social superiors, but regains it thanks to the spirits of the bells.

Like its predecessor, A Christmas Carol, it carries a heartfelt plea for charity and brotherhood and examines such distressing themes as suicide and infanticide, as well as the question of whether the poor have any right to live at all. The book also continues its predecessor’s vigorous satire on the social injustices of its day, and is perhaps more explicit and confrontational in its approach. The supernatural is also present, this time in the form of the spirits of the bells in a church tower.