Charles Dickens 'rhetorical exuberance': Harold Skimpole in "Bleak House" is based on James Henry Leigh Hunt: his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognised herself in Miss Mowcher in "David Copperfield". Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his meeting with Hans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep. Virginia Woolf maintained that "we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens" as he produces "characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks". One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to
James Dickens seat was gained by the Conservative candidate John Gummer. After leaving Parliament, he became Assistant Director of Manpower for the National Freight Corporation. He subsequently joined the National Water Council as Assistant Director of Manpower and was promoted to Director of Manpower. From 1983 to 1991 he worked as Chief Personnel Officer to the Agricultural and Food Research Council. He left the Labour Party in 2003, because of opposition to the Iraq War. Dickens was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours list of 1991. James Dickens James McCulloch York Dickens OBE