The run up to the Christmas holiday has been a particular joy this term, not least for the continual progress of my KS2/3/4 students (well done you lot) but also the use of ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens. This book is, without a doubt, one of my all-time favourite books since childhood. The fact that it is also a GCSE text makes it all the more special.

There is something atmospheric and meaningful when this novella is read, or re-read, during the dark and dusky afternoons of winter. The book comes to life and the writing of Dickens conjures up vivid images in the mind of the reader. He offers us rich descriptions of those types of foods we associate with Christmas;

 Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch. It has been a lovely experience to teach English using this book with a lamp by my desk and a mince pie on a plate! In fact each student joined me and also had a festive mince pie as we sought to describe how all this rich Christmas food would look, smell and taste.