Even great wine can’t quite give me hope for Lebanon
This should be an earthly paradise. It hasn’t quite worked out that way
Ed Balls’ Christmas Day starter recipe
The former shadow chancellor’s step-by-step instructions for perfect individual crab and Gruyère soufflés
Dear Mary solves problems for Nicky Haslam, Nigel Slater, Professor Mary Beard and others
On being an arbiter of what is common; how to control one’s face when opening presents; and how to treat the demands of food faddists
Mrs Badgery
A Christmas short story by Wilkie Collins, illustrated by Carolyn Gowdy and with an introduction by Philip Hensher
The smoking diary of Gregor Hens
In Nicotine, Hens memorably describes being ‘repulsed and overjoyed’ to have spotted a smoking area (‘a kind of suffocation chamber’) at the airport
Larkin’s misty parks and moors — in all their lacerating beauty
A hitherto unpublished collection of the poet’s photographs range from affectionate studies of friends to sombre landscapes viewed from high windows
Osbert Lancaster: a national treasure rediscovered
Lancaster’s delightfully sardonic spoof architectural histories are handsomely republished by the Pimpernel Press
The answers
On the record 1. Jean-Claude Juncker 2. David Cameron 3. Sir Tim Hunt 4. Jeremy Corbyn 5. President Vladimir Putin…
Answers to ‘Spot the Line of Poetry’
1. Ill-met by moonlight (Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) 2. Hope springs eternal in the human breast (Pope’s ‘An Essay…
The joy of physics
Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics has outsold even Fifty Shades of Grey in his native Italy
The rise and fall of Sony
Sony was the Apple of its day and more. Stephen Bayley charts its years of creativity unrivalled in the history of consumerism
Royal Opera’s Cavalleria rusticana isn’t nearly vulgar enough
They rescue their double bill, however, with an admirable Pagliacci. Plus: at the Barbican, Leoncavallo’s Zaza: plotless, vastly too long, musically weak - and thrilling
Darth Vader is dirty and it’s not just me that thinks so
As well as being filthy, Stars Wars taught Hollywood how to make children’s films for adults and they’ve never looked back
A paean to the fleshy delights and tacky excess of Soho
Raymond Revuebar's winking hoarding is like a righteous raspberry to the perpetrators of the Paris atrocities
Why did a Russian ballet dancer throw acid in his boss’s face?
Plus: the kamikaze rudeness of Rudolf Nureyev hits the big screen
Musical maestros and football managers have more in common than you think
The parallels are pervasive but conductors earn proportionately more - often as much as half an orchestra - and they hang on for years after their sell-by-date
Grandma: a feminist comedy that punches magnificently above its weight
In almost every way, Lily Tomlin, who plays the tart-tongued Grandma, is wonderful
Tricycle’s Ben Hur is magnificent in its superficiality – a masterpiece of nothing
Plus: a Turner Prize entrant that got lost on its way to Tate Modern by Caryl Churchill at the Lyttelton
Was my article the inspiration for this brilliant BBC dramatisation?
Nothing warms the cockles of James Delingpole's heart more than this superbly acted BBC2 drama on the making of Dad's Army
Radio is flowering because it’s so much more potent than TV
Plus: a Radio 4 documentary that gives a real insight into what it’s like to be a Syrian refugee
