IMO, in this book, Pratchett was at his best when writing his original characters - Dodger, Simplicity, the handsy cook whose name I can't remember. It is she who took in Simplicity after it became clear that she was not safe at the Mayhews’ house and who uses her resources to protect her. The story opens on a dark, wet night(almost the cliched "a dark and stormy night" but Pratchett never lets you see it) as a carriage comes careening through the streets, carrying a damsel in distress, under threat of death. It follows Darrell Rivers and her chums sharing friendship and high jinks in their traditional 1940s British boarding school. In his afterword, Terry Pratchett apologises for the fact that this is a work not of historical fiction but of historical fantasy.

There was no mention of working class figures of the industrial era organised labour movement - the movement that would culminate in arguably the biggest ever shift in British society: the post-war Labour victory that led to the NHS, radical redistribution of wealth, the grammar schools and free University education - all of which would have fundamentally shaped TP's childhood and adult opportunities. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA Photo Terry Pratchett … Dodger is 'an ebullient, funny and delightful novel'.Featuring original music throughout, this live action sitcom also combines high-end CGI and visual effects.

Home to Her Majesty, Fleet Street, the Square Mile and Dodger - known to all, Dodger is crafty, nimble and some what flexible object of lost and found. He doesn’t expose what he knows about Simplicity, and he doesn’t intervene when Dodger knowingly breaks laws to protect her once and for all. Or perhaps the “rosebud mouth” used of Dickensian heroines throughout his career, from Rose Maylie in “Oliver Twist” to Rosa Bud in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”.

Add in a lively set of support characters, funny dialogue, great action, and finish it all off with Dodger, one of the most lovable characters that I have read about. Simplicity is a mysterious girl that Dodger rescues from being beaten by two men at the beginning of the story. Although he is not averse to helping himself to others' belongings, Pratchett's Dodger is not a pick-pocket as such, but a 'tosher', a scavenger who combs the foul sewers of Victorian London to find lost coins and trinkets.

It's hard not to compare to Terry Pratchett's non Discworld novels because I love them so much and in Dodger I feel like I am getting a Discworld novel in structure and flavour, but with a difference. We get to see Dodger trying to right a wrong, trying to track down villains that are beating up young girls, and much more.Several historical figures make an appearance in Dodger, including Charles Dickens, Robert Peel and Henry Mayhew. Dodger acknowledges that women sometimes have children out of wedlock and that poor, desperate girls sometimes turn to prostitution to survive, but it doesn't dwell on these situations. In this case we have “The Outlander”, a wanted assassin who has been hired to kill Simplicity and Dodger. According to the author's afterword, the story is set "broadly in the first quarter of Queen Victoria's reign", which would be between 1837 and 1853.

Because Dodger is fundamentally a rags-to-riches tale, where the audience is asked to empathise with and applaud Dodger's rise to join the upper classes, while throwing out the occasional sixpence whenever he feels a twinge of guilt. Also, this kind of writing I find more fitting for children's books, and this one wasn't exactly that, although Dodger feels more like a 12-year old boy most of the book, that is until he makes it clear he is ready to get married. Working with the very best material as a springboard, it’s a total delight to expand Dickens’ rich world of characters and create a few of my own. We may love him for his stories and characters, but he wrote much more; a great part of his writing being comic satire, whether fiction or his many essays and pieces of journalism.It had no humour whatsoever, and did not capture the feeling of Victorian London—nor the personalities of its real life characters—who just seemed to be included willy-nilly. I am so old that the whole concept of the tweenager did not yet exist and so you were faced with the stark choice Enid Blyton or Jackie Collins when you wandered into The novel is dedicated to the real Mayhew in honour of his work drawing attention to the plight of London's poorest through his book London Labour and the London Poor.