The Christmas Collection (Poetry S.)

Get in the mood for the big day with Christina Hardyment's The Christmas Collection. Old favourites such as Mr Pickwick's Christmas and The Night Before Christmas blend wonderfully with, among many other offerings, The Christmas Mummer's Play from 1863 and an extract from John Evelyn s Diary, A Civil Wartime Christmas, 1657. Readers include Peter Jeffrey, David Timson and Liza Ross - and, interspersed with carols, it's a delight! --Kati Nicholl, Daily Express

SoundCommentary Best of 2010 Audiobooks --SoundCommentary

Christmas brings out the best and worst in us, as can be seen in this evocative anthology. Among what Thomas Love Peacock calls the 'many poetical charms in the heraldings of Christmas' there are eulogies by saints and diatribes from curmudgeons. Here, Christmas is expounded by divines, sung by rustics, deplored by philosophers, made mystical in stories...and summed up in a line by the poet Elizabeth Jenkins: 'The hush, the star, the baby, people being kind again'.