Dickens knew he was a driven man. He was a compulsive walker: four miles an hour, ten to fifteen miles by day or night. ‘If I couldn’t walk fast and far’, he said, ‘I should just explode and perish.’
John Carey observes, he sees ‘almost everything from two opposed points of view’. This is the vision which shapes one of the most famous opening lines in fiction: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ (A Tale of Two Cities). Best and worst. Contradictions and oppositions, extremes and hyperbole. These are the hallmarks of the Dickens style.