5. What PGS Library Staff are Reading, Watching and Listening to this Christmas

Portsmouth Point editors asked PGS Library staff to share their favourite Christmas books, films and songs. 

Mr Sadden

You can’t beat A Christmas Carol – that traditional story of how a stone-hearted, miserable, misanthropic Tory almost becomes a Socialist – but which filmed version is the best?

For me, Michael Caine - a real-life Tory – plays the role of Scrooge in the spirit of both Dickens and the Muppets – not an easy balancing act – and delivers one of his best ever performances. But the all-time best adaptation was filmed 70 years ago in black and white (avoid the “colourised” version) and has some wonderful British character actors headed by Alastair Sim – a real-life Socialist – whose performance as Scrooge makes this film an enduring festive highlight. Sim, with his unique physiognomy, is perfectly cast and his journey from lugubrious to joyful should have particular appeal after a year of mask-hidden misery. 

“Merry Christmas and God Bless Us Everyone!”

Miss Hill

I don't know whether this can be classed as a Christmas book, but Little Women always gives me the Christmas warmth. It has such touching Christmas scenes: from the opening chapter, where the girls give their Christmas breakfast to those in need, to a very touching reunion scene around the tree and a very emotional gift of a piano.  

Many of us are facing a very different Christmas this year to what we are used to and this is exactly the situation the March family are experiencing at the beginning of the book (because of the Civil War, not COVID, it hasn’t been going on that long, however it might feel). With the famous opening line of “Christmas won’t be Christmas without presents” (Oh Jo!) and it’s more heart-aching echo “It won’t be Christmas without father”, this is a somewhat melancholy beginning to Christmas which I think many will find very poignant this year. But the charm of Little Women lies in the these very real hardships the family face, and the way they strive, sometimes reluctantly, to rise above them. Turning what could be a sad and lonely Christmas into a playful time of charity and family is just the sort of story we need this year.

Dr Webb

I do not have a favourite Christmas book but I can recommend the one I have just finished reading!  Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko has reminded me of how much I enjoy fantasy reading. Tarisai is raised in isolation with a single destiny outlined for her.  The pain this isolation causes her and the imagination she uses to cope with it are immediately resonant with our own current experiences.  Her destiny involves special powers, a secret and the ruling of an empire.  All great ingredients for an adventure.   Here they have been wielded under the influence of West African culture which has creating an atmosphere that is intriguing.  I hope for a sequel.

 

Mr Olson

Every December for the past 10 years or so, I have plucked a Charles Dickens novel from the shelf and basked in the glow of candle lit rooms, coal fires, and delicious, gossipy dinner parties. To my American imagination, the Dickensian iconography found in A Christmas Carol spills out into his entire catalogue. The exotic sounding foods, benevolent strangers, quiet-but-overcomeable menace, plucky heroes: from Nicholas Nickelby to David Copperfield the yuletide feeling weaves through them all (well, maybe not Hard Times). There’s something about firelight beating back the dark, bleakness of midwinter which speaks to me. To our Victorian forebears, for whom electric lighting and central heating was as foreign as figgy pudding is to us, the Christmas season was about finding something warm, something with flavour, something bright to see off the shortest days of the year. I want my TV off. I want warm light bouncing off shiny green holly leaves. I want the benevolence of the Cheeryble brothers, the magnanimity of the Fezziwigs, the optimism of the Micawbers...and maybe, just somewhere in the distance, the occasional clank from Marley’s chains.