List $34.98

Written by Charles Dickens et al - Audio book performed by Anton Lesser with music composed by Britten, Corelli and traditional carols - Unabridged Fiction - 5 COMPACT DISCS - 6 hours

Publisher, Naxos Audiobooks (October 2005)

The perfect coupling for Christmas evenings or Christmas journeys.

Perfect for those Christmas evenings trimming the tree or Christmas journeys, A Christmas Collection is a varied, well-chosen selection of words, stories, essays, poems and reflections made by writer Christina Hardyment. Also includes the great Christmas story A Christmas Carol by Dickens, which has never lost its charm, in which Scrooge learns compassion and love.

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'.