A Review By David Boulton

I make no apologies for turning to classic literature for the subject of a review, for I am an utter Dickens fan, through and through. I love his novels and have read and re-read them. I do not believe there has been a better writer in the English language, since Shakespeare. Barnaby Rudge, however, had been a blind spot. I had never read it. I started once, but allowed myself to be sidetracked and did not get beyond about the sixth chapter.

Recently, however, I took it up again. Though it starts slowly, I was not ultimately disappointed, for this is a superb tale of individuals who get caught up in the horrors of mass activity – the Gordon riots of 1780, and it abounds in memorable Dickens characters: Sim Tappertit, the self-important, self-deluding leader of the would-be sinister ‘apprentice knights’; the villainous Hugh, ostler of the Maypole Inn with its fat and tyrannical landlord, John Willet; the fair but capricious Dolly Varden; Barnaby Rudge himself, the merry simpleton, who plays such a key role in the story; Gabriel Varden, the long-suffering locksmith of redoubtable character; the Machiavellian John Chester, cold, heartless and elegant… The novel is enormously rich in the sorts of characters for whom Dickens is justly famous.

For some reason not one of Dickens’ better-known novels, Barnaby Rudge was written some eighteen years before his other historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities, which was also to be about social revolt, mob violence and judicial execution.  Barnaby is the work of a young man, it is true but one who was in full control of his theme and his powers. It dramatizes two of Dickens’ major preoccupations – private murder and public violence.

The Rev’d David Boulton is Diocesan Curate and Webmaster for the Free Church of England, and also a Preacher for The Leprosy Mission, England & Wales.