Oliver Twist, his second novel, remains gripping and terrifying. Without the music we all know it is much darker stuff, as the evil characters turn on one another and it reaches a frantic black climax.

David Copperfield was Dickens's own favourite novel: it has the best account of childhood, and the highest count of memorable characters - Peggotty, Murdstone, Steerforth, Micawber, Betsy Trotwood, Dora, Traddles among them.

Skip through the first part of A Tale of Two Cities and you will find yourself engrosssed and agog at the account of Paris during the Terror, and in love with the great self-sacrificing Sydney Carton.

The Old Curiosity Shop has one of Dickens's funniest villains in Quilp, and something of a self-portrait in Dick Swiveller the lawyers' clerk, who falls in love with a nameless child servant he finds locked in a basement - a book full of surprises.

For a big read, take Little Dorrit, in which Dickens shows London in all its filth, and stench, with an incompetent civil service, a corrupt banker courted by the establishment and a rotten prison system. Powerful and brilliant stuff.

Charles Dickens: A Life paints an unforgettable portrait of Dickens, capturing brilliantly the complex character of this great genius.