THE great great grandson of Charles Dickens has said we still have not learned the lesson of A Christmas Carol.

Abingdon actor Gerald Dickens, 46, said his famous ancestor would be shocked by bankers with bonuses living alongside abject poverty in modern Britain, 166 years after penning the tale to urge goodwill to all men.

In the book, selfish miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the spirits of Christmas past, present and future, before turning his life around to help the poor.

But despite the novel’s continuing popularity, Mr Dickens – who tours a one-man show of A Christmas Carol – said social problems affecting Victorian London still haunt modern Britain.

He said: “The fact the same issues are just as prevalent rather shows we have not learned from the story.

“There are still massive problems of homelessness and a huge divide between rich and poor.

“If you look at the whole issue of bankers’ bonuses, it sums A Christmas Carol up in a nutshell.

“My great-great grandfather would have been completely frustrated, and he would not have stopped until he had seen something done about it.”

Dickens expert Dr Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, of Magdalen College, Oxford, said: “I think Charles Dickens would have been alarmed, but not necessarily surprised, by the beggars on the street, the sensation of being in a hurry without really knowing where we are going, and the fact most people in a town or city walk around with an invisible wall around themselves.”

The latest 3D animation film of the story is now in cinemas. The Bishop of Dorchester, the Rt Rev Colin Fletcher, said its message was still relevant.

He said: “All of us have to face the question of what we do with our wealth and A Christmas Carol still reminds us of the significance of generosity.”

At Operation Christmas Child in Witney, where 3,000 shoeboxes of presents have been donated for children in Kyrgyzstan, volunteer Andrea Drowley said Dickens’s message had shone through.

She said: “We have come through the ghosts part of the story in A Christmas Carol and got to the generous part of the story.”