Earlier this year the desk on which Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations went up for sale. It was a clumpy Victorian piece of furniture, made of dark mahogany with heavy drawers on either side in a style so unfashionable that similar ones are to be had on Ebay for about ￡500.

Yet such is the relationship between a person and his workstation that this particular desk — along with the chair on which the author placed his famous behind — is now on display at his former house in Doughty Street, thanks to a charitable grant of more than ￡780,000.

Desks tell us a good deal about the person who sits at them — as well as about the time at which the sitting was done. What Dickens’ desk says is that writing is a serious but solitary business — and that the man who wrote here was important and prosperous.