"Now what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life…" So says Thomas Gradgrind in Dickens' immortal story set in the North of Englandin th 19th Century. Gradgrind, a local industrialist, gave this advice to his children set against a backdrop of huge wealth and even huger poverty wher the rich marry for money and the poor cannot afford to divorce. The greed leads to gambling and the rich rule the poor who suffer.

Charles Dickens is probbaly Britains most successful novelist of all time and Hard Timesis unusually for Dickens set in the North and is a rarity in that the novel is reasonably short.