If anyone can make something beautiful out of something chaotic and terrible, it is the mesmerisingly good duo that is The Bird and the Bee, made up of singer Inara George and producer Greg Kurstin. Their latest collaboration, Put Your Lights Up was put together during a year when a Continue Reading
Christmas in July 2026
Christmas in July movie review redux: A Boy Called Christmas
As origin stories go, the one that belongs to Santa Claus is a doozy. Drawn from a host of different European traditions, embellished by one Charles Dickens in the nineteenth century and prettied up with fetching red and a convivial air courtesy of a soda maker in the 20th, Santa Continue Reading
Christmas in July redux: Music review: Snow Waltz by Lindsey Stirling
This review was first published 9 December 2022. Christmas is supposed to be a thousand good and wonderfully light-as-air, joyously uplifting things. And while it often is – all that tree trimming, laughing with friends and brightness of decoration can only make you feel like a million festive bucks – Continue Reading
Christmas in July book review: Christmas on the Isle of Skye by Kirsty Ferry
Zac Fallon and Ivy McFarlane have a problem. They haven’t declared their undying love for each other to each other, what with suppressing how they really feel and not wanting to risk looking like a fool or deciding that a onetime dream of a goal trumps present bliss and happiness, Continue Reading
Christmas in July redux: Retro festive movie review: White Christmas
(courtesy IMP Awards) This review was first published Christmas Eve 2023 Returning to a much-loved Christmas classic many years after it was last watched is an interesting exercise. Our minds are fiendishly clever things but one of the interesting dynamics they employ is to appropriate snatches of a plot in Continue Reading
Christmas in July book review: Home Again for Christmas by Emily Stone
(courtesy Hachette Australia) When you have been hurt deeply, traumatically so, it’s understandable, especially if you’re a child and your ability to process the level and type of hurt isn’t yet developed enough to think it all through, to recoil and withdraw from whatever hurt you. Distance, we think, is Continue Reading
Christmas 2026 book preview: Stay Another Christmas by Phillipa Ashley
(courtesy Phillipa Ashley email) SNAPSHOTThe perfect festive Lake District escape from bestselling author Phillipa Ashley. After a life-changing accident, Katie’s plan for Christmas is simple: rent a spectacular island house in the Lake District, gather the people she loves, and enjoy snowy walks, crackling fires and the promise of a Continue Reading