London echoes to Dickensian footsteps

LONDON - Not far from the Olympic Park, a pub called The Grapes leans over the River Thames like "a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all."

It is hardly the image of sporting prowess but the place, conjured by Charles Dickens, underpins important historical context for the 2012 Games and a reality that endures.

The characters who visited this tavern "of dropsical appearance" in the 1860s novel "Our Mutual Friend", lived in the parts of London where 2012 will be staged, and included archetypes like the people in "The adventures of Oliver Twist" - young innocents and scoundrels living rough lives.

A few streets from the pub, beneath the docklands railway, Dickens scholar Tony Williams shows a reporter a trim terrace of whitewashed houses.

This part of London - Limehouse - was where Dickens' godfather, who made rigging for ships, had a home. When Charles came to visit he called in on a nearby lead mill that employed mainly women - poisoning some - a children's hospital, and various households.

Such places today are within sight of the pyramid-topped tower of London's financial powerhouse Canary Wharf, and attract valuations comparable to the financial district of Manhattan.

That puts them out of reach of most people, especially residents of the boroughs that are hosting the Games. Here, up to one in two children live in poverty, according to local council data.

Unemployment in Newham, one of the poorest boroughs, is nearly 45 percent - the highest rate in the country. Life expectancy is about two years below the UK average; Newham has Britain's highest rate of tuberculosis diagnoses.

London is full of memories of Victorian England, an era of dramatic extremes of wealth and poverty. A short walk through east London in the company of Dickens brings to mind a world whose poverty and squalor the author exposed more than 150 years ago; poverty which has only partially been redressed.