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My Favourite Charles Dickens character: Mr Pumblechook from Great Expectations (1861)

No one could claim that Mr Pumblechook is one of Dickens’s great characters. But he was among my first and so remains indelible. I was 13 years old when I read Great Expectations, sitting in the class of a kind and inspiring English teacher called Mr Roberts. (It never struck us at the time what a perfect choice of reading material this was, though it appears thunderingly obvious now: we were a classroom of Pips.) Mr Roberts had a splendid reading voice, enunciating each word with a care and precision that was almost comic. I can still hear him stressing the “chook” of “Pumblechook” today.

Like Mr Roberts, Dickens revelled in preposterous names – Bayham Badger, Cornelia Blimber, Serjeant Buzfuz, Anne Chickenstalker, Mr Fezziwig, Paul Sweedlepipe, Lucretia Tox, Mr Wopsle – and handed them out with care. Just the word “Pumblechook” told you instructive things about its pompous and hypocritical owner. (You see Mr Roberts, I was paying attention at the back.)

The second thing that struck me about Dickens's writing is how much description he lavishes on minor characters. It sometimes feels as if his novels should be sold with 3D glasses: even the background details leap out at you.

Mr Pumblechook, for example, is little more than a bit-part player in Great Expectations but Dickens still pulls out all the stops to fix him in the reader’s mind. He was “a large hard-breathing, middle-aged slow man,” Dickens writes, “with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked." Could any other English writer make such a small man as Mr Pumblechook so memorable?

The full series of 'My favourite Charles Dickens character' is:

• Pip (Great Expectations) by Neil McCormick

• Quilp (The Old Curiosity Shop) by Christopher Howse

• Rosa Dartle (David Copperfield) by Rupert Christiensen

• Sissy Jupe (Hard Times) by Florence Waters

• Madame Defarge (A Tale Of Two Cities) by Daisy Bowie-Sell

• Aged Parent (Great Expectations) by Martin Chilton

• Ebenezer Scrooge (A Christmas Carol) by Charles Spencer

• Uriah Heep (David Copperfield) by Mark Monahan

• Estella (Great Expectations) by Serena Davies

• Stephen Blackpool (Hard Times) by Dominic Cavendish

• Esther Summerson (Bleak House) by Rachel Ward

• Thomas Gradgrind (Hard Times) by Morwenna Ferrier

• Joe Gargery (Great Expectations) by Tim Robey

• Sarah Gamp (Martin Chuzzlewit) by Robbie Collin

• Bill Sikes (Oliver Twist) by Catherine Gee

• Mr Pickwick (The Pickwick Papers) by Sameer Rahim

• Wilkins Micawber (David Copperfield) by Terry Ramsey

• Sir Leicester Dedlock (Bleak House) by Andrew Baker

• Mr Brownlow (Oliver Twist) by Clive Morgan

• Miss Havisham (Great Expectations) by Lorna Bradbury

• Jo The crossing sweeper (Bleak House) by Paul Gent

• Jennie Wren (Our Mutual Friend) by Ivan Hewett

• Nancy (Oliver Twist) by Lucy Jones

• Sydney Carton (A Tale Of Two Cities) by Patrick Smith

• Bazzard (The Mystery Of Edwin Drood) by Philip Womack

• The Artful Dodger (Oliver Twist) by Andrew Marszal

For more information and stories on Charles Dickens see the Telegraph Charles Dickens page.

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