The Forum's resident Charles Dickens' scholar, combat, hasn't yet drawn Forum members' attention to this story so, reluctantly, I must step in. The building that may have served as Dickens' model for the workhouse where Oliver Twist asked for more is to be preserved from demolition. The derelict Georgian building in Cleveland Street, London, which in Dickens' day was known as the Strand Union workhouse, has been given listed status by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Oliver Twist famously became a member of a 19th Century go-go boy bar known as Fagins'.

The decision, on the advice of English Heritage, came on the grounds of its literary and historic associations rather than architectural merit, to prevent its being demolished and replaced by an apartment block. The workhouse тАУ one of three such buildings surviving in London, but the only one still in operation in the 1830s when Dickens was writing his novel тАУ has been identified as his possible model. The author lived 100 yards away on the same street as a teenager.

The full story can be found at The Guardian.