Read and re-read over the years. It serves for me as an evocation of Christmas, and also in a curious way an instruction manual. Shirley Hughes writes and draws with an amazing clarity that gives her work a sort of authority. Yes, it is set in time, with ethnicity and class embedded, but is for me a beloved classic, and à compassionate and keenly observed account. Shirley Hughes is a great loss to children’s literature and this, of all her books, seems to me one that will last.