Last Christmas

Memories of Christmases Past and Hopes For Future Ones

Bill Bailey, Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, Caitlin Moran, Meryl Streep, Emily Watson... Actors, charity workers, singers and refugees share their memories of Christmases past and their hopes for future ones.

The perfect gift book, featuring the writing of Meryl Streep, Bill Bailey, Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, Caitlin Moran, Richard Ayoade, Emily Watson and others, to coincide with the upcoming movie Last Christmas, starring Emma Thompson, Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding.

When you think back to Christmases past, what (if anything) made it magical? Looking towards the future, what would your perfect Christmas be? What would you change? What should we all change?

This is a beautiful, funny and soulful collection of personal essays about the meaning of Christmas, written by a unique plethora of voices from the boulevards of Hollywood to the soup kitchens of Covent Garden.

Away from the John Lewis advert, the high street decorations and the candied orange in Heston Blumenthal's Christmas pudding, this gem of a book introduced and curated by Emma Thompson and Greg Wise celebrates the importance of kindness and generosity, acceptance and tolerance - and shows us that these values are not just for Christmas.

Clare and Greg Wise were born and raised in the north of England. She read books, he fell out of trees.

She excelled at school, he hid when the end-of-term Report came.

She got a Double First in History at university. He did two Degrees - one where you spend your time drawing, the other where you pretend to be someone else.

Oddly, as adults, they both found themselves in the film business: she at the UK Film Council and then Vice President of Universal Pictures, he pretending to be someone else.

They lived in the same street until her death in 2016.

Last Christmas
Hachette Australia
ISBN: 9781529404227
RRP: $29.99