Get into the festive spirit this Christmas with a punch-fuelled walking tour of Dickensian London.
There couldn't be a better time of year to raise a toast to Dickens. He is arguably the reason we celebrate Christmas as we do – with family and friends, presents, roast turkey and plenty of booze. Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol rekindled the medieval festivities of the religious event, which were much diminished after the ecomonic and social upheaval caused by the Industrial Revolution. A Christmas Carol, with its images of snow, big family gatherings, references to 'Smoking Bishop' punch and "the biggest turkey you can find" put all the fun back into Christmas. So blame Dickens for the Boxing Day hangover and the turkey curry you're still eating weeks later.
Having wanted to do a tour of Dickensian London for ages and finding out that the folks at Courvoisier had organised one which included the famous 'Smoking Bishop' punch, I leapt at the chance to check it out.
Starting off at Bow Street Magistrates' Court, our tour guide Fred, dressed in a tweed suit and deer stalker (leading me to wonder whether we'd accidentally stumbled across the Sherlock Holmes tour) briskly leads a small group of us around Covent Garden, stopping at various points of interest to explain their connection to the author. We visit the Dickens Coffee House where he lived and worked in his latter years, the Adelphi Theatre which appears in David Copperfield and the church of St Clement's (the bells of which wake Scrooge on Christmas Day).
Focusing more on boozy fun than the finer historical details of Dickens' life, the actual tour section is very brief, so don't expect to explore parts of, say, Chancery Lane or Fleet Street. Halfway through, we run into a character dressed in scruffy Victorian garb, carrying a lantern, who turns out to be 'Bob Cratchit'. He leads us to the Old Curiousity Shop by Lincoln's Inn Fields (now one of the oldest shops in London), where we spend our final half hour. There, Cratchit introduces us to another character 'Scrooge', or the spirit of Scrooge, who comes to life every Christmas and gets increasingly confused with modern technology, like cars and kids with iPods.
This 'theatrical' section of the tour threatens to be quite cringeworthy, particuarly when we are asked to join in with one of Scrooge's 'drinking songs', but as soon as the punch is introduced, it suddenly becomes rather fun.
We are encouraged to hunt around the room for various ingredients like orange peel, port, cinnamon sticks and of course the most special ingredient of all: 'Courvoisier' cognac. It turns out the branding of the event is a lot more appropriate than you would think, as we find out that 18 dozen bottles of Courvoisier were discovered in Dickens' cellar after his death.
Traditionally, wine and port are the only alcohols used in the Smoking Bishop but the addition of cognac certainly doesn't detract from its deliciousness. All the ingredients we find are then heated up in a (rather modern) electric soup kettle and Scrooge hands us each a 'smoking' teacup of the spicy punch. After two teacups of punch, a mince pie, another few choruses of 'Fathom the Bowl' and a cheer of 'God Bless Us Every One', suffice it to say, I'm feeling decidedly festive.
Our cynical Scrooge-like souls thawed out, we head off into the night, with a miniature cocktail gift in our pockets and a boozy, or should I say, happy, glow on our faces.
The Courvoisier Dickens Punch Tour runs until Saturday 3rd December, from Wednesday-Saturday at 6pm and 7.30pm (1 hour duration) starting at Bow Street Magistrates' Court, Bow St, WC2.
Tickets cost £12 (includes punch and guided tour) and can be bought online here
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