By Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities:

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…” with these words and a superb act of bravery and sacrifice, one of the most badly behaved heroes of all time ends Charles Dickens’ great tale of the French revolution. This is a firework display of a book, a crackling picture of the ravages and excesses of starving, furious men and the astonishing acts of heroism that usually accompany them.

Dickens was terrified of the state of affairs in England when he wrote the book shortly after the European wide revolts of 1848. Britain had got off fairly lightly, due to luck rather than policy, and the two cities Dickens was writing about were the Paris of the 1790s and the intended reflection of the London of the 1850s. He saw his gloriously horrific Madame Defarge knitting viciously as easily at the foot of Nelson’s Column as by the steps of the Guillotine.

The wide and wild array of characters in this novel include some of Dickens’s best loved and the break neck speed (excuse the pun) at which he runs you through the story leaves you panting, laughing and in all likelihood weeping by the end.