Now a major film directed by Armando Iannucci, starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi and Ben Whishaw

Dickens''s epic, exuberant novel is one of the greatest coming-of-age stories in literature. It chronicles David Copperfield''s extraordinary journey through life, as he encounters villains, saviours, eccentrics and grotesques, including the wicked Mr Murdstone, stout-hearted Peggotty, formidable Betsey Trotwood, impecunious Micawber and odious Uriah Heep.

Dickens''s great Bildungsroman (based, in part, on his own boyhood, and which he described as a ''favourite child'') is a work filled with life, both comic and tragic.