Courvoisier’s Dickens Punch Tour

Life in London is so hectic that we often forget to take a step back. Beyond the bills, the performance reviews and Oyster card top-ups, we fail to realise the relative significance in what we’re doing and its actual importance. This city is full of the imprints of those who have lived here before us and the legacy that we have left behind. Yet all we see are the buildings and the roads that link our house to the Tube to our work and back again.

Yet there is an experience on offer in the coming months that aims to bring parts of London alive once again. The Courvoisier Dickens Punch Tour mixes a little bit of history with some literature and a belly full of booze. In the year before Charles Dickens’ bicentennial, the parts of London that are important fixtures in both his life and his works make part of the tour around places that look familiar but have much more to tell than you might know.

A group of us started at the Bow Street Magistrates Court, a now defunct debtors court. Debt was always a concern for Dickens after his father was thrown into debtors prison and it’s notable that a number of his characters are never far from being locked away in similar institutions.

Dickens was not only a writer but a publisher, both of his own works and those of his contemporaries. His publishing press was run from Tavistock House, which is situated on Bow Street and in the vicinity, you’ll find the Charles Dickens Coffee House.

Down by Aldwych is the church of St Clements. It lays claim to the one featuring in the nursery rhyme and also to house the bells that awake Scrooge on Christmas Day, ending his fearful nightmare.

It was this same Scrooge that was to be found at the final point of our tour, the Charles Dickens Old Curiosity Shop. The group was led there by a very agitated Bob Cratchit, interrupting our learned guide Pip. The route from St Clements was a little convoluted and once inside, the exchange between a reformed Scrooge and Mr Cratchit could have been got out of the way more quickly. Because we were here, not for the interplay between two characters acutely aware of their fictional state but for punch, good old punch which is becoming ever more welcoming as the nights draw in.

Working from a 19th-century recipe, our group combined to produce a batch of Smoking Bishop. The ingredients? Some red wine, a little bit of port, oranges and grapefruit, cloves and cinnamon. All heated up, it was thoroughly warming and not too woozy. As we left, kind Mr Scrooge pressed into our hands a present. What was it? Why more booze, a little tincture of a cocktail to be enjoyed at leisure.

The tour combines a little bit of education with a large portion of fun, as well as the chance to give yourself a little perspective about the city in which you’re really just the latest person to pass through.

The Courvoisier Dickens Punch Tour runs until December 3, Wednesday to Saturday, 6pm and 7.30pm (1 hour duration) starting at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, Bow Street, WC2. Tickets cost £12 (includes punch and guided tour) and are available to purchase from the Courvoisier website.