Wilkins Micawber

Charles Dickens' Wilkins Micawber understood fully the implications of this: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.

Like Dickens' character Wilkins Micawber, who bumbled along hoping something would turn up, Mrs May has kicked the Brexit can down the road, burying divisions and hiding from hard choices in the vain hope it would get sorted.

So let's adopt the maxim of Dickens' Wilkins Micawber from David Copperfield: "Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him".

"Ah yes, Wilkins Micawber, though himself a profligate debtor, was preaching the virtues of austerity." IDS smirked.

In his novel "David Copperfield," Charles Dickens' character Wilkins Micawber summed up the city of Eugene's budgetary situation: "Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 19 and six, result happiness.

DISGRACED Craig Whyte was yesterday ordered to pay PS17million to Ticketus - by a judge who compared him to hapless Charles Dickens character Wilkins Micawber.

WHENEVER I see the term "auditor" I reflexively think of Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield and the Dickensian axiom: "Annual income, twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result, happiness; annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."

patients and West Kirby No doubt Cameron, Clegg and company are hoping, like Wilkins Micawber, that something will turn up - anything to postpone or prevent the plebiscite.

If you read "David Copperfield," you will encounter a part of his father in the perennially-in-debt-but-always-brimming-with-possibly-profitable-plans Wilkins Micawber.

Karl Marx, plagued like Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield, forced to disguise himself to avoid a host of creditors at the door so that he can slip out and visit the library to continue his writings in peace; Jenny, often deserted, trying to keep up Victorian bourgeois appearances while forced to pawn clothes, silver, her children's toys; the riotous calamity of boisterous, artistic and intellectual daughters forced into the situation of many young women of the Victorian era to find husbands in order to survive economically.

Even Charles Dickens' eternal optimist Wilkins Micawber would have been worried when Lee's effort was saved by Steve Simonsen and Matt Lowton ran up with the chance to put Sheffield United 2-0 to the good with just two penalties apiece to go.

On the edge of the coin is an inscription of the quotation "Something Will Turn Up", spoken by Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield - said to have been Dickens' own favourite story from his catalogue.