Get into the Dickensian spirit

HOTEL REVIEW
The Clarence
Portsmouth

Given his phenomenal literary output, it's perhaps not surprising that Charles Dickens was a stickler for punctuality. In an 1863 letter to the editor of Punch, reminding him that he was due to dine with him, the great man instructed his friend to arrive "at a quarter before six for six sharp - not a blunt half after".

That was just one of the things I learnt about the author during a trip to Portsmouth, the city of his birth - with a wealth of Dickensian connections - celebrating his bicentenary this month. My first stop was the Dickens Birthplace Museum, a handsome Georgian house where Charles was born in February 1812, which has been restored to look as it did in the author's infancy.

His father, John, had moved to Portsmouth with his family after landing a job as a wages clerk in the naval dockyard. But John Dickens - like Mr Micawber in David Copperfield - was feckless, a point made amply clear by a rent book from the time showing the Dickens household in arrears for two quarters in a row.

At the time of Dickens's birth, the Napoleonic Wars were raging, and Portsmouth, England's main naval base, was a hive of activity, with warships prowling the shoreline in search of the enemy. It was a rough, tough garrison town. "The Hard" (the road leading to the naval dockyard) was "a scene of drunkenness and profligacy that baffles all description", according to a contemporary of Dickens'.

I climbed the 560ft-high Spinnaker Tower, with its magnificent views of the south coast and Isle of Wight, before checking into the Clarence.

On arriving at the eight-room Edwardian villa, a couple of hundred yards from the Southsea seafront, I was offered a complimentary drink and upgraded to an executive room - the curiously named "Monkey Room". This was in the old servants' quarters at the top of the house. It was decorated with a reproduction-style patterned blue and white Zoffany wallpaper, which wouldn't have looked out of place in the 1900s.

The bathroom, up a small flight of steps, had slate-coloured wall tiles, modern-style Laufen "his 'n' hers" washbasins, and a large walk-in overhead shower. As the Clarence doesn't do dinner, I dined at the ABar Bistro, a restaurant-bar in Old Portsmouth, a five-minute cab ride away.

Lying just across the road from the fish market, the New England-style ABar, run by wine merchant David Moore, specialises in seafood (as you might expect given its location).

My roast butternut squash, chickpea and rocket salad starter, followed by seared sea trout and risotto, went down an absolute treat.

After returning to the Clarence, I lay in the king-size bed and watched One Day, adapted from David Nicholl's best-selling novel. He has also written the screenplay for a big-screen version of Great Expectations out this year.

I was suffering from a bit of a cold and the receptionist kindly offered to bring me up a herbal tea with honey.