"...it has seemed fitting to the South East Development Agency to pay tribute to the role that Chatham (and nearby Rochester) played in Dickens's life by creating "Dickens World," an entertainment complex including rides with a Dickens theme on the site of the former naval docks. Construction will begin soon, and the opening is scheduled for 2007.
Dickens is so various an author that it's possible to justify almost any excess done in his name. But "Dickens World" is really too much. Dickens himself might have seen it - and the $116 million, before overruns, it will cost to build it - as an enterprise worthy of Mrs. Jellyby, a case of good intentions run hideously amok. "Dickens World," its promoters say, will be a "family attraction." It will help revive a depressed area. And above all, they claim, it will bring new attention to Dickens. As the project leader put it - in curiously strangled English - in an interview with a British newspaper: 'For a man who wrote 15 books and 23 short stories, you would be hard-pressed to find anybody under 30 who can name 5 of them.'"
The Old Curiosity Mall
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