LONDON (AP) — Prince Charles led ceremonies yesterday to mark the 200th birthday of novelist Charles Dickens — a writer as popular today as he was during his lifetime.

The heir to the British throne laid a wreath on the writer’s grave in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner, in front of an audience containing dozens of Dickens’ descendants.

Actor Ralph Fiennes read from “Bleak House,” and there were prayers for the poor and marginalised, for writers and for journalists.

More events are being held in Portsmouth, southern England, where Dickens was born the son of a navy pay clerk on Feb. 7, 1812.