HELLUVA TWIST
“Dear Diary, you won’t believe what happened to me today...” (Public domain/Wikimedia) Charles Dickens was mugged while walking alone along Chatham harbour in Kent in 1859. But in a twist akin to Magwitch’s reappearance in Great Expectations, Dickens instantly recognised his attacker. The man in question was Henry Tilbury, an old schoolfriend of Dickens from his formative years living in Chatham, before his family moved back to London with his father’s work in 1822. Although