WHEN Charles Dickens took pen in hand to serialise the misadventures of Ebenezer Scrooge, little did he realise the world-wide impact that work would still have well over a century and a half later.

Christmas isn't complete unless our household views at least one television broadcast of A Christmas Carol, preferably with Alastair Sim or George C. Scott, with an encore of the musical version Scrooge, starring Albert Finney and Alec Guiness.

The tale which still captivates viewers was a success from the start in 1843. However, it was only one of many works which made Dickens the most famous writer of his time.

London-bound travellers paying attention encounter his colourful past all over the city, which helps explain why his influence remains so recognised and strong 135 years after his death.

Dickens roamed the city searching material for his novels. He especially enjoyed wandering its streets at night, composing whole chapters while he walked. Enough books to fill a library have been written about sites connected with his life and his books.

This traveller had the good fortune on one of her earliest Dickens assignments to be shown around by his grandson Cecil Charles Dickens, who told us: "It always comes as a surprise when travellers learn just how much of Grandfather's London still exists."

This traveller's lifelong interest in Dickens' work began as a prep school freshman checking David Copperfield out of the school library. It's no surprise it turned out to be Dickens' favourite. The years since have taken me to a seemingly endless collection of places associated with his life.

His London City home at 48 Doughty Street, now a Dickens museum furnished with mementoes of his life, is a good place to start. It's there he wrote Oliver Twist, finished The Pickwick Papers and started Nicholas Nickelby. Many of his manuscripts and first editions are in this three-storey, 12-room house, along with personal belongings, furniture and letters.

It was there he spent his early married life with Catherine, daughter of newspaper publisher George Hogarth, starting in 1837. That relationship ended 22 years later with him keeping the children and setting her up in a house with horse and carriage and an allowance.

HIS country home, Gads Hill in Kent, achieved a life's dream. Dickens had admired that 14-room brick estate as a youth taking walks with his father, who told him if he became "clever and successful" he could some day own it or a place like it. Rather a strange suggestion from a man who was far from a shining role model.

At age ten the idyllic country life young Charles so enjoyed came to an abrupt end when his free-spending father left his Admiralty work at Chatham's Naval Dockyard fleeing creditors and bad debts.

Although John Dickens made a decent living, and spoke frequently of his "grand expectations", he consistently borrowed and overspent, until being arrested and sent to debtors' prison. Young Charles was exposed to "the great heaving mass of the city . . . armies of beggars, homeless children, public hangings, poverty and disease".

Dickens gathered most of his material and characters from personal experience and his own life is well worth attention. Although he enjoyed tremendous success, happiness eluded him. Tormented by memories of the past, the one that haunted him most was being sent at age 12 to work at a London boot-blacking factory for six shillings a week.

With the father in debtor's prison, his mother insisted she needed that six shillings. Yet sister Fanny was educated and sent to music school.

"How could I trust my parents again?" the humiliated lad kept asking himself. Forced to work with children of slums (Bob Fagin being one of them), he felt abandoned, humiliated and wanted very much to be educated.

He became driven, what today would be called an over-achiever, determined that success would erase his shame. Tremendously bright, he took a shorthand course at age 19 hoping to become a parliamentary reporter. He finished what was normally a three-year course in only three months, but found parliament "an unwholesome place".

What one reads in his remarkable books was not written by Dickens' imagination, but from actual depressing experience. But his work exposing that side of London's life did have a social impact that resulted in changes. A generous contributor to charities, he had a strong moral influence and left us with unforgettable images of that time period.

Dickens travelled extensively, not only gathering material, but giving popular, well-attended readings of his work in England and overseas. So you are likely to encounter "Dickens slept here" inns at sometimes surprising locations. The historic Angel Hotel in Bury St. Edmunds is one which had the good sense to preserve his room in its original condition, much to the delight of modern travellers. Relaxing in the four-poster bed in Room 15, Dickens wrote: "Last night I read Copperfield at Bury St. Edmunds to a very fine audience. I don't think a word, not to say an idea, was lost."

The Athenaeum Hall there, where he is known to have given two readings, was built in 1789 and sits beside the well-maintained jewel of a hotel. Dickens immortalised the hotel as a setting in Pickwick Papers and they in turn have lined their Charles Dickens Bar with drawings of his characters and the Pickwick Bar with Victorian prints.

I REALLY enjoyed the room where he stayed (now with modern private bath). The four-poster didn't have curtains like Scrooge's, but the most unusual porcelain bedposts, which reminded me of elaborate vases.

Certainly the great writer also took time to explore the vast Abbey ruins just across the road, and fine Georgian houses which make this one of England's very special market towns.

Encountering him in this way is a delight . . . whether it be at his birthplace in Portsmouth, where I stumbled onto his father's house en route to tour Nelson's famous ship Victory, or one of what seemed like hundreds of other places. He enjoyed wild landscapes and churning seas. There seemed to be no mountain too high or place too distant.

While staying at Brighton's Old Ship Hotel, we learned he has taken up residence there in 1837 to work on Oliver Twist and again in 1841 while writing Barnaby Rudge.

He even made it to St. Louis, Missouri where prairie preservationists like my family recall his enthusiasm about the landscape. He rode out by stagecoach to one of North America's largest prairies and marvelled that one could barely see the top hat of a man on horseback riding through tall grasses made this some of the world's most fertile land.

There have been many Scrooges (In fact, don't we all personally know some who qualify for that description?) But when we were asked to write about Albert Finney as a crotchety old Ebenezer grouching his way across a London bustling with holiday excitement, it turned out to be a very different kind of musical Scrooge.

THAT production travelled across London, scouring the same antique shops and markets that so fascinate tourists, looking or authentic props to set their scenes.

When a production ends, there's a party to celebrate its successful conclusion. In true Dickens style, the cast decided to raise a toast appropriate for the occasion and came up with Dickens' own tasty recipe for Christmas punch. Finney labelled it "a punch with a punch".

Dickens was an expert punch maker who always prepared a warming mug of the brew for his family and friends after wintry walks in London or the surrounding English countryside. The recipe was passed out on the set to Sir Alec Guinness (Marley's Ghost), Kenneth More (Spirit of Christmas Present) an Dame Edith Evans (Spirit of Christmas Past). This writer also received a copy. Here is the recipe in Dickens' own words:

"To make three pints of punch, peel into a very strong common basin (which may be broken, in case of accident, without damage to the owner's peace or pocket) the rinds of three lemons, cut very thin, and with as little as possible of white coating between the peel and fruit attached. Add a double handful of lump sugar (good measure), a pint of good old rum and a large wine glass full of brandy. If it is not a claret glass, say two. Set this on fire, by filling a warm silver spoon with the spirit, lighting the contents at a wax taper and pouring them gently in.

Let it burn three or four minutes at least, stirring from time to time. Then extinguish it by covering the basin with a tray, which will immediately put out the flame. Then squeeze in juice of the three lemons and add a quart of boiling water. Stir the whole well, cover it up for five minutes, stir again.

At this crisis (having skimmed off the lemon pips with a spoon) you may taste. If not sweet enough, add sugar to your liking, but observe that it will be a little sweeter presently. Pour the whole into a jug, tie a leather or coarse cloth over the top, so as to exclude the air completely, and stand it in an hot oven ten minutes, or on a hot stove one-quarter of an hour.

Keep it until it comes to table in a warm place near the fire, but not too hot. If it be intended to stand three or four hours, take half the lemon out or it will acquire a bitter taste."

After our first printing in The Chicago Tribune, numerous reprint requests followed the next year. One reader wrote: "After drinking it, I thought I was Charles Dickens!"