Book review: The Mystery of Charles Dickens

The leitmotif – surely somewhat of a cliche – is that Dickens was a "sick, divided soul". It is the darkness rather than the light in his personality and writing that is emphasised: Wilson paints a man who keeps secrets, hiding behind the masks and impersonations attendant on his infatuation with the theatre and withholding the truth "even from those who believed themselves to know him best".

The Daily Telegraph