Portsmouth anniversary in 2016. In literature, Portsmouth is the chief location for Jonathan Meades' 1993 novel "Pompey", in which it is inhabited largely by incestuous and necrophiliac criminals. Since the release of his novel, Meades has presented a TV programme documenting Victorian architecture in Portsmouth Dockyard. In Jane Austen's novel "Mansfield Park", Portsmouth is the hometown of the main character Fanny Price, and is the setting of most of the closing chapters of the novel. In Charles Dickens' novel "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby", main protagonists Nicholas and Smike make their way to Portsmouth and get involved in a
Buses in Portsmouth Bus Company in 1986, the Gosport & Fareham Omnibus Company was merged with the western part of Hants & Dorset in April 1983 to form the Provincial Bus Company which was sold to its employees in 1987 and renamed People's Provincial which then expanded into Portsmouth in the early 1990s. Southdown was sold to its management at privatisation. The municipal operation was sold to a consortium consisting of its employees and Southampton Citybus in 1988, and was rebranded as Portsmouth Citybus. In 1989 both Southdown and Portsmouth Citybus were sold to the Stagecoach Group, but the group was forced to