Two short-ish winter tales by the historical children’s novelist and self-confessed snow obsessive, Emma Carroll, who transports readers to a late 19th century frost fair and a family mystery on the streets of a Victorian town near Bath. Carroll’s debut novel Frost Hollow Hall was a superbly creepy winter ghost story, and in the Snow Sister … Continue reading
Based in New York at the turn of the twentieth century, The Gift of the Magi is an urban melodrama sprinkled with some of the magic of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. We meet Della, a young woman with just one dollar and eighty seven cents with which to buy her husband Jim something … Continue reading
I've just been watching the strangely affecting BBC Four Christmas offering The Fir Tree, a Danish drama about the life of a Christmas tree; from birth through his brief, shining glory to a tragic death, it's quite unusually told by the fir itself. The story is based on a rather pessimistic tale by Hans Christian … Continue reading
Some people find Raymond Briggs' The Snowman a little depressing. My daughter howls uncontrollably when the John Lewis ad with the Bear and the Hare comes on. Well those two ain't got nothing on The Little Match Girl, the bleakest of all Christmas stories. It's the last day of the old year and the Little … Continue reading
