Booksquare

Back at one of the elevated bridges, one of the site’s builders, Daryll Humphrey (“yes, the gravestone is named after me. It’s staying!”) was showing his partner and sons around the site. Thomas, 11, liked the old benches and the cinema and the writing on the schoolroom walls. And would visiting Dickens World make him want to find out more about the novelist? “No. I’m not interested in that. But I liked the people dressing up as policemen.”

• High time above the sewer boat ride to the slums