Director Mike Leigh and actress Alison Steadman celebrated at double plaque unveiling

The Camden connections of literary giant Charles Dickens, film director Mike Leigh and actress Alison Steadman were celebrated at a double plaque unveiling ceremony in their honour.

Actor and Dickens devotee Simon Callow was on hand to unveil a blue plaque dedicated to the Victorian writer in Cranleigh Street, Somers Town, where he lived from 1824 to 1829.

Mr Callow said: “In quite an important sense, Camden made Dickens what he was.

“His early years were a sort of idyll down in the country and then he was introduced to the harsh realities of life at the age of 11, in Camden Town.

“It was not such a wonderful place to live in the 1820s. Being Dickens he forgot nothing and used everything.”

The Mayor of Camden, Cllr Jonathan Simpson, also pulled away a curtain to reveal a plaque commemorating the street’s links to Mike Leigh and Alison Steadman, outside their former home in Brook House.

Cllr Simpson noted that while “in many ways putting up a blue plaque for somebody who is alive is unusual”, but described the pair as “great national heroes and very much still Camden figures”.