Books

All of us long for some kind of profound connection. More than that, we need it, in ways too complex and unknowing to articulate at times, and we often need more of it that we realise, especially at Christmas which, possibly more than most other festivals, near-demands an intense and Continue Reading

Can Christmas transform your life in the most magical and transformative of ways? We all like to think so; there’s something about this most wonderful of seasons that makes most of us believe that it is somehow set up from the humdrum, pell-mell banality of life and thus is capable Continue Reading

If ever a Christmas called for some feel good love and wonder, it’s this one. Coming at the tail end of a year of pandemic, which shows no sign of bowing out gracefully for a 2021 unfettered by sickness and death, Christmas 2020 feels like it needs all the help Continue Reading

Life, it has oft been noted, does not come with do-overs. It would be nice if it did since, despite our best intentions, we seem to keep doing things poorly that require a better, more improved iteration and we are, quite simply stuck with the consequences of our annoyingly flawed Continue Reading

One of the loveliest things about the Christmas novel genre is how they often feel like a great warm, festive hug just when you need it the most. While Christmas is for many people the most wonderful time of the year, it does arrive hot on the heels of 12 Continue Reading

You might ask yourself if Christmas actually needs a biography – aren’t all its many secrets and stories already well known to us? It turns out, as you dive deep into the highly readable Christmas: A Biography by Judith Flanders, that they really, really aren’t. All those stories we know Continue Reading

Is Christmas a romantic time of year? That depends very much on who you ask but it is true, at least for the most part for Lily and Dash, two quite different young people who, after a red Moleskine book full of dares sends them running all New York and, Continue Reading