A man who truly needs no introduction, Carl’s love of Birmingham is only equaled by his desire to let the rest of the world know about it. Not only is Carl an expert on the better-known aspects of what made Birmingham but he’s also able to lift the lid on lesser-known but equally important areas, such as the impact Birmingham made on Charles Dickens at a time when the novelist was winning his reputation as the Victorian era’s foremost social commentator.

Carl will be presenting a special evening entitled Dickens, Birmingham and Christmas at Norton’s, Digbeth on Wednesday 10th December. Before that, he was asked about the connection between pre-eminent novelist and the second city.

“Although his books weren’t set in Birmingham and he wasn’t from Birmingham, Charles Dickens had a deep bond with Birmingham. He came here just after the Great Reform Act of 1832 as a political reporter and he called Birmingham the town of iron and radicals; iron because of the ironworking in Birmingham and radicals because Birmingham had been at the forefront of the democratic movement that had been pushing for the Great Reform Act.

“Then he wrote his first great novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, and in it there’s a short section about Mr Pickwick and his servant Sam Weller coming to Birmingham. They came by stage from Bristol, along Bristol Road and up to Five Ways then down Bath Row and one of the compelling paragraphs about their arrival:

‘As they rattled through the narrow thoroughfares leading to the heart and the turmoil, the sights and sounds of earnest occupation struck more forcefully. The streets were thronged with working people, lights gleamed from the casement windows in the attic storeys and the hum of labour and the whirl of machinery shook the walls. Those lurid solid lights and invisible trails blazed fiercely up in the works and the factories of the time, the clash of hammers, the rushing of steam. And then there was the hard engine that arose from every quarter.’

“What a fantastic, vivid, engaging with all the senses, description of Birmingham, and what I like about it is not only grabbing hold of people through the senses of sight and sound, who was thronging the streets? Working people.

“He really had got a bond with Birmingham. He wrote about Birmingham again in The Old Curiosity Shop, where Nell and her granddad arrive in Birmingham by canal and he also wrote a short story Muckby Junction that called Birmingham the ‘great ingenious town’ in 1837. Then in the Pickwick Papers he’s called it ‘the great working town’.”

You’ve said Birmingham is unique amongst major cities in that it has no port, no navigable river or traditional roadways and it has no great mineral deposits. It became a great city solely because of the ingenuity and work of its people.

“Purely that. The River Rea was important as a source of water, particularly in the Middle Ages when Birmingham was a tanning centre and for cooling metal in the spinneys but it’s not a navigable river. We’re not a defensive site like Dudley or Edinburgh. Birmingham didn’t have coal, iron ore, limestone or fireclay beneath the surface like the Black Country.

“Yes, of course we mustn’t overlook the dire poverty, but there was also excitement about industrialisation, despite the dirt, the pollution and the negative effects and that was why so many people across Birmingham sought to industrialise. So Dickens had this great gift of arousing the senses.

“He came to Birmingham several times later. He came with his travelling theatre company and then in 1852 a group of working-class men came together to raise money to have a ring made for Dickens in the Jewellery Quarter. He hadn’t been poor himself but he’d had it rough, because his dad was in debtors jail but he had empathy with the working class and he had a particular belief that working class people were fighting for self-improvement.

“The presentation got taken over by the local gentry but some of the working men were there and he’d heard that there were attempts to raise funds for an educational institute. That became the Birmingham & Midland Institute and he said,‘I want to come back between Christmas and New Year and give readings from my seasonal tales.’ He came in 1853 for three nights. The first two were for the better-off but he insisted that as this new institute would help working men and women educate themselves after work he would give his talk for free to raise funds.

“He insisted that for the third night the prices were reduced to allow the working class to come in. They came in their thousands and stood for 3 1/2 hours as he read from A Christmas Carol. He had a wonderful gift to reading his stories; he could portray the characters’ different voices and at the end of the third reading one of the committee, a local worthy, shouted, “Three cheers for Dickens.’ A working man then shouted, ‘And thrice three cheers for Mrs Dickens’ and they almost rend the roof off with their cheers.

“Dickens later became a president of the Birmingham & Midlands Institute and just before he died he came to make a presentation and said, ‘I have a deep bond for Birmingham but this ring I wear, I shall wear until the day I die.’ He said, ‘I had that ring made by Birmingham men’ and then he caught hold of himself and added, ‘I have a deep bond with Birmingham men, and Birmingham women.’ When he died not long after the Birmingham press said, ‘Birmingham has lost a great friend’.”

You’re doing this event at Norton’s. After listening to you here there can’t be much more to tell.

“There’s much more to be told. There’ll be photographs of old Birmingham, sketches from the mid-nineteenth century and also discussions about his trips around Birmingham with his theatre company when he disguised himself to go into pubs and listen to stories.”

It’s almost back to the beginning in a pub, in Digbeth which was always one of the poorer parts of the city but is now one of the most stylish places in Europe.

“It is, but I worry the city centre is expanding and becoming increasingly gentrified. The council is not concerned enough with building social housing; how many more apartment blocks do we need? It’s spreading out, a concern is that Digbeth and Deritend, which are Birmingham’s creative quarter, could be losing that accolade because of the development of more apartments and the rising cost of land and rent.”

In years to come, who will future generations look back and see was a great friend of Birmingham in the 21st century?

“That’s a really tough question. We don’t help ourselves, there’s the bin strike; the bin workers don’t want a rise, they just don’t want to lose money. They’ve been treated abominably by the council and the Commissioners. The cutbacks imposed upon Birmingham are having a massive effect on communities that are already under stress. I’m a Brummie historian and I’m appalled that a Labour council is closing down libraries, youth clubs, youth facilities at a time when we need them opened.”

An Evening with Carl Chinn: Dickens, Birmingham and Christmas at Nortons, Digbeth, 7.30 on Wednesday 10th December.