DIDCOT will be transformed into a Victorian winter wonderland as it celebrates a Dickens of a Christmas.

A Christmas Carol author Charles Dickens’s great-great-grandson Gerald, who has waived any fee, is guest of honour at tomorrow night’s Christmas Street Fair.

The Broadway will be closed to traffic from 4-9.30pm as up to 20,000 people descend on the town. This year, the £16,000 show includes:

* The Christmas parade, led by Gerald Dickens aboard a Victorian horse-drawn bus

* Dickensian market stalls at the Methodist Hall and Market Place, complete with children’s rides and a circus workshop

* A Victorian carousel at the Orchard Centre, along with craft stalls and street entertainers

* Traditional carol singers

* Victorian ghost stories at Newbury Building Society.

And this year, Father Christmas will be clad in green, as originally portrayed in Victorian imagery before Coca-Cola marketing men decided to dress him in red. Santa’s grotto will be in the Train offices in Lower Broadway from 3pm.

More than 60 craft and community stalls will be selling produce in Broadway and the Orchard Centre and staff in many shops will be dressed in Dickensian costume to hand out mulled wine, mince pies and chestnuts.

Stores throughout the town will be staying open late.

The grand parade, including characters from Charles Dickens’s books, the Reading Scottish Pipe Band and Victorian bicycles, will leave the Orchard Centre at 7pm and head down Broadway to the Civic Hall.

It is the 16th time Didcot’s Chamber of Commerce has organised the festive spectacular. Street fair committee chairman Jeanette Howse said: “The books of Charles Dickens will be a great draw and to have his great-great-grandson taking part is brilliant.”

During the road closure, buses will re-route past the train station. Information will be available at every bus stop.