Does Dickens have relevance for modern Britain?

29 May 2012 Last updated at 13:01 ET Help

BBC Newsnight's Stephen Smith explores what modern Britain can learn from the works of Charles Dickens.

He speaks to the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams who expresses an anxiety about the gulf between the top and bottom of society.

Historian Professor Kathryn Hughes explains that despite being a reformer and wanting to make the lives of people better, Dickens was a conservative and his novels did not involve "wholesale intervention by the State."

Newsnight is broadcast on Monday 28 May at 22:30 on BBC Two.

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