While a boy living at Gads Hill Place, his father's country home, he, with his brother Edward, started the 'Gad's Hill Gazette', a family newspaper printed on a small printing press given to him by Mr Wills, the sub-editor of All the Year Round.

[9] He attended Trinity Hall, Cambridge, from 1868, graduating BA in mathematics (29th Wrangler) in 1872 before studying law at the university.

[10] Of that period at Cambridge, Dickens later wrote: Looking back now upon the years that are gone, I find that there are one or two scenes or incidents which arise with astonishing vividness to my mind that may be worth recording ...

I do so because it is typical of a strange reticence on [my father's] part, an intense dislike of 'letting himself go' in private life or of using language which might be deemed strained or over-effusive; though, as will be seen later, when he was deeply moved he was at no pains to hide the depth of his emotion.

Disappointed to find that he received the news apparently so lightly, I took my seat beside him in the pony carriage he was driving.

That pressure of the hand I can feel now as distinctly as I felt it then, and it will remain as strong and real until the day of my death.

Although she was convicted, Dickens's defence was so spirited that she was given a reduced prison sentence due to public petition.

As Common Serjeant, Dickens judged criminal trials at the Old Bailey for over 15 years, retiring on 18 October 1932.

On one occasion, Dickens was judging a case when the male prisoner interrupted him by saying "You ain't a patch on your father."

"[14] He repeatedly refused nominations for election to Parliament, believing it would adversely affect his legal practice.

To celebrate his eightieth birthday in 1929 he went through the whole of A Christmas Carol without a hitch, his false teeth loosening at the melodramatic sections: 'I know him – Marley's ghosht!'.