Nice Mr Scrooge

SIR: Barry Cryer says (June issue) his most treasured Dickens moment occurs in A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge finds he’s been utterly transformed by the visits from the ghosts. I’ve always suspected that people would have soon found the reformed Scrooge to be quite insufferable and would have been asking themselves: was the unreformed Scrooge all bad?

A fresh light was cast on this question in the TV drama Dickensian, broadcast by the BBC a few years ago. The action takes place on a street inhabited by various Dickens characters, including the unreformed Scrooge. It was interesting to note that in this version Scrooge comes over as a perfectly reasonable individual. True, he is mean and hard-nosed, but he isn’t dishonest or malicious. He just lends people money and expects them to pay him back according to the agreed terms.

And when Dickens has the feckless father of the future Lady Dedlock ( Bleak House) sent to the debtors’ prison, I was rooting for him all the way. Philip Sheail, Hertford, Hertfordshire