One of the saddest places in London: the wall of the Marshalsea prison in Southwark for debtors, finally closed in 1842. I visited it a few days ago.

Here Charles Dickens’ father was imprisoned for debt and his 12-year-old son had to find work in a blacking factory. It was a humiliating experience made worse by the fact that the young lad was ‘on show’ and made fun of in the factory.

From this experience that great novel ‘Little Dorrit’ was born, at the end of which the protagonists, Amy and John marry in the nearby church of Saint George. For this couple’s union Dickens wrote some of his most heartfelt lines.

It was moving for me too as I touched a wall within whose confines so many suffered and died just because they could not pay their debts. How much are our lives controlled by that evil god Mammon!

In ‘Little Dorrit’ Dickens also expresses the highest appreciation of the Italians, a people he greatly admired, through the  simple and generous character of Gianbattista Cavalletto.

I remain ever grateful to my Eng. Lit. teacher at Dulwich who got us through this somewhat long novel for ‘A’ level and revealed its treasured insights to our class.

Dickens’ observations in the novel of the English abroad are quite hilarious too and bear a remarkable resemblance to those from Albion and residing in Italy who still wish to have their cake and eat it while applauding the putch perpetrated in their country of birth. So many persons with continental heritage are affected by the current situation dividing my country of birth that I find it difficult to forgive anyone who voted to leave.

Yet one must forgive and pardon the ignorance of those persons who never experienced a European inheritance, who never had to endure racism because of it, who never saw their parents attacked because they were not born in that ‘green and pleasant land’.

Forgiveness, after all, is a manner of liberation from the ignorance inhabiting the minds of those who still believe in the separation of the United Kingdom from its great European family.

Let not another wall be built, more damaging than even that which encircled the Marshalsea! Please no!

(St George’s Church in London’s Borough High Street where Amy Dorrit and John Clennam were married).