"In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth, animate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr Tulkinghorn sits at one of the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a priceless binn of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes."
from 'Bleak House', by Charles Dickens

Over the holidays I've been watching the BBC's adaptation of Bleak House. The casting in particular is spot-on. Charles Dance has really matured as an actor and is outstanding as Tulkinghorn, Gillian Anderson, of X Files fame, makes a perfect porcelain-featured Lady Dedlock, Phil Davis as the villian Smallweed is superb, but really the entire cast is excellent. Dickensian England is recreated very convincingly, and the direction is sharp and pacy. Dickens is no Dostoevsky - he creates caricatures rather than characters - but he is an entertainer, with tremendous descriptive powers, a great ear for dialogue, and an expert way of weaving a good story. I expect Bleak House will be syndicated world-wide, so if you live elsewhere keep an eye out for it.