I have no idea why, but when anything gets too popular, I lose interest. Hip Hop was cool until it went mainstream. I ignored The Hunger Games, have never watched Eastenders, and haven’t seen Barbie (but I have seen Oppenheimer—I’m not always consistent). And so when I found Anthony Doerr’s globally-popular Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All

One of my favourite Christmas artworks is a painting called The Nativity by contemporary artist Brian Kershisnick. The first thing that strikes you is the hundreds of angels swooping across the canvas to get their first glimpse of Mary’s new-born son. After this your eye falls on two delightful details—first, that it isn’t Mary or