‘We’ll talk and laugh’

PHILIP PULLMAN, author of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One, will spend time with family.

At Christmas, my wife Jude and I will see family, eat and drink too much, and I’ll fall asleep while someone else walks the dogs. THE RED HAIRED WOMAN ◆ I’ll be giving by Orhan Pamuk. It’s a fable and a myth and a love story. H IS FOR HAWK ◆ is a real classic: Helen Macdonald’s poetic writing about her goshawk, Mabel, her father’s death and the destruction of nature is profound and unforgettable. ◆ Astrid Lindgren, author of the Pippi Longstocking stories, was a young woman A WORLD during the Second World War. In GONE MAD, her observations are written with the same clarity as her children’s books.