Round the Christmas Fire: Festive Stories

Oh the weather outside is frightful, so draw up a chair to the fire (an electric heater will do), get the chestnuts roasting, and conjure some festive feeling with the help of this seasonal selection.On Christmas Eve it is traditional to scare yourself witless with ghost stories - classics from Edith Wharton and M.R. James should get you started.Diary entries both real and imagined reveal innocent Christmases past, while tales from P.G. Wodehouse and Damon Runyon show the singular workings of the yuletide spirit.Go carolling with Laurie Lee and the animals of The Wind in the Willows, meet some unruly relations courtesy of Stella Gibbons and Nancy Mitford, feast on Christmas geese and puddings zestfully imagined by Dickens and Edith Nesbit, while O. Henry and John Cheever ruminate on the nature of gift-giving.As the fire is slowly dying, bittersweet and comical Christmas memories from Truman Capote and Dylan Thomas draw your seasonal reading to a close.