Stop complaining about January – it’s the best month
It’s not the month you want, but it’s the one you need.
ByChristmas
The Christmas gift of Viagra
I’ve always felt the word festive may be applied as easily to the bedroom as to bunting. Men Up proves…
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Winter Reflection: Fellowship of the flock
The pied wagtails delight in urban environments, and display a communality during the darkest, hardest months of the year.
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The psychology of why we celebrate Christmas
Nostalgia, hope and indulgence are key to human existence.
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The 10 best Christmas films of all time
Featuring Muppets, gremlins, elves and an assassin.
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Golden Mean: A parable for Christmas
A new short story by Alan Garner.
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Christmas in Hamburg
At the city’s festive markets shopping is not the objective: it is to meet friends and sip Glühwein.
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The hypocrisy of Rishi’s Right
Also this week: the power of the Nativity, and why books are like batteries.
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This year, all I want for Christmas is normality
My father will sit, happy and well, at the centre of my family’s celebrations. And that is all that matters.
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At Christmas I meet a kindred spirit – we both have more to look back on than forward to
The family’s new dog took to sitting at my feet and looking up at me, as if to say: We…
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Howard Jacobson’s Diary: Escaping an icy fate in the Highlands, celebrity-spotting in London, and my soft spot for the King
Finding poetic consolation on a quest for snow, solace and Santa.
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The Detectorists Christmas special is playful and exquisitely moving
Like every great Christmas parable, Detectorists sees how the epic and the everyday are intertwined.
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The best new films to watch this Christmas
This year’s festive offerings, from The Silent Twins to Avatar.
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A history of snowfall in the UK
Is the dream of a “white Christmas” over?
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The lessons of King Charles’s first Christmas speech
The King largely avoided politics in the ecumenical message he had been waiting decades to deliver.
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Seven swans not swimming: how bird flu came to Christmas
A family of London swans offer both warning and hope in the face of an overlooked crisis.
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Then Later, His Ghost: a Christmas story by Sarah Hall – Audio Long Reads
Christmas coming, a man and a woman in a lonely long barn expecting a child, a post-apocalyptic landscape, a journey…
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Motherland festive special: A Christmas Carol for the Mumsnet generation
This special edition of Sharon Horgan’s BBC One comedy is perfect in every way, save for the fact that it…
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What Rishi Sunak doesn’t get about strikes
A pledge to ban strikes and thus make pay bargaining harder is a pledge to ensure recruitment and conditions keep…
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Two years on, our trade deal with the EU is a rotten turkey
A poll finds more than three quarters of companies believe the Brexit deal has been unhelpful to their business.
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