Modern kids' 'short attention span' blamed for inability to read Dickens

London, Feb 6 (ANI): Charles Dickens' acclaimed biographer Claire Tomalin has claimed that today's children do not have the required attention span to read the author's classic, but lengthy books.

Tomalin blamed modern education for this state of affairs, even as Britain celebrates the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth this year.

"Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner," the Daily Express quoted her as saying.

"Children are not being educated to have prolonged attention spans and you have to be prepared to read steadily for a Dickens novel, and I think that's a pity," she said.

Tomalin said that, after Shakespeare, the 'Oliver Twist' author is the greatest creator of characters in English and his depiction of an unfair society is "amazingly relevant" even today.

"You only have to look around our society and everything he wrote about in the 1840s is still relevant - the great gulf between rich and poor, corrupt financiers, corrupt MPs, how the country is run by old Etonians, you name it, he said it," she said.

Events to mark Dickens's birthday on Tuesday include a street party where he was born in Portsmouth, and a wreath-laying ceremony at Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. (ANI)