Over 40 years. That's how long it's been since the last major Dickens exhibtion in London.

 

But boy has it been worth the wait. The new one – it's at the Museum of London (from December 9th through June 10th) – is magnificent. A chance to see things that you'd otherwise never get to see. Or that even if you were a specialist and could wangle "access" to them you'd have to spend a fortune in time and money travelling around, "picking them off" one by one. (And of course even that – "picking them off one by one" – wouldn't be the same thing. Not by a long shot. The point is that here they are – all together, under one roof. And viewed together – beautifully, intelligently "arranged" – well, the whole is greater, much much greater, than the sum of the parts!

 

So that's very good news. And to stack good news – London Walks has "cut a deal" with the Museum of London. We've secured, for our walkers, a brilliant – a hefty – discount on the price of admission.

 

All you have to do is get one of the specially prepared (just for you) London Walks-Museum of London Dickens & London Exhibition vouchers and you're "quids in". Present it to them at the counter and in you go. Red carpet treatment – a very handsome saving on the admission price.

 

Now, how do you get the voucher? Well, at no little risk of belabouring the obvious  – ask your London Walks guide for one.

 

And look, it's going to take us a while to get them out to all of the guides – all 75 of them. But we've made a good start. I"m writing this on December 9th – Day One of the Exhibition.

 

"A good start" translates into the following London Walks guides "packing": Adam, Alison, Karen, Katy, Mary, Graham, Andy, Angela, Simon and moi (David). Yup, we're all "vouchered up". Jean should be vouchered up come her Dickens' Christmas Carol & Seasonal Traditions Walk tomorrow afternoon (Saturday, December 10th). Fiona & Steve come their Ripper Walks tomorrow afternoon and evening. Ditto Don & Molly come their Ripper walk Sunday evening. The Canal Walks team should have theirs when they're next out. And so on.

 

Anyway, as we get them out to the rest of the team we'll update the "good start" list. What I can tell you right now is that by, say, December 20th most every London Walks guide will have them. 

 

Not sure? (Despite the David excitement cup runneth over.) Well look, if you've got any doubts about the muzzle-loading-velocity of this one, let me "top up" what I've already said about it. Top it up by saying: I'll be making a bee line for the place most Sunday afternoons after I finish my Shakespeare's & Dickens' Old City walk. (Indeed, come on my walk and come with me – now there's a siren song for you!) I'll be going in there week after week because this chance isn't going to come again. An example or two? Well, this one's the only chance non-specialists are ever going to have to see the manuscript of the greatest opening Dickens ever wrote – the opening of Bleak House. And for good measure, they've got Great Expectations MS material. Talk about an embarrassment of riches.  That kind of thing is close to home for me because I spent a year of my life working with a Dickens manuscript. It's the art – and the raw materials that got transmuted into that art. Everything from professional mourners' wands – white ribbon for the death of a child, black ribbon for an adult's passing – to the exhibition's walls themselves. Astonishingly, they've begrimed them so "they look like Victorian London".