A Family Christmas

Read by Juliet Stevenson and Simon Callow, A Literary Christmas is a seasonal anthology that collects together poems, short stories, and prose extracts by some of the greatest poets and writers in the English language. Like Charles Dickens’ ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, they are representative of times old and new - from John Donne’s Elizabethan hymn over the baby Jesus to Rudyard Kipling’s "Christmas in India", from Thomas Tusser counting the cost of a Tudor feast to Laurie Lee’s "Cider with Rosie".

Everyone loves a bedtime story. And here are eight of the best from BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, each with a Christmas theme, written by an array of literature's best-known names. They include Laurie Lee, Charles Dickens, and Hans Christian Andersen - just some of the storytellers included in this collection.

You are about to listen to the true story of Father Christmas. It is a story that proves that nothing is impossible. If you are one of those people who believe that some things are impossible, you should put this book down right away. It is most certainly not for you. Because this audiobook is full of impossible things. Are you still reading? Good. Then let us begin....

A BBC comedy drama set in the world of a 'pile 'em high university'. Karen Poynter is the new head of the Geography Department - renamed Geographical Tourism - at Hayborough University, which is definitely not part of the elite Russell Group of top universities. Ranked 132nd in the UK academic league table; if you have a pulse, you can have a degree. This is the high-energy farce of the breeze block and grotty cafeteria, with all the endless meetings, the backstabbings and the sheer panic of a university setting. In an era of increasing fees and cutbacks, this satire has become all the more acute.

A Christmas anthology from legendary historian and Christmas Cracker compiler John Julius Norwich. This year go carol singing in the Cotswolds with Laurie Lee or attend church with a grumpy Samuel Pepys. Make plum puddings for bemused French villagers with Elizabeth David; go present shopping with Virginia Woolf, or eat far too much with Agatha Christie. Celebrate Christmas at Chatsworth, in the workhouse or marooned in the ice with Shackleton....