What's a better part of Christmas than some hearty Christmas telly? Twinning your telly programmes up with their original literary forebears, of course. On the BBC, we've got quite a few on-screen/on-page twinnings, not least a Russell Brand bit of tomfoolery over in the States. Brand hitched over there a few months ago to retrace the steps of Kerouac himself in his On the Road journey, in an hour-long celebration of the book on its 50th anniversary. Expect lots of passage-reading and hopefully some humorous soul-searching as he scamps his way across the continent.
Elsewhere, you'll have the chance for a Dickens of a Christmas, with the BBC's glossy-yet-soot-smudged Oliver Twist, Blackadder's Christmas Carol, and not one but two versions of the actual Christmas Carol over on Channel 4 (the Reginald Owen one and the Patrick Stewart one - hurrah!) on Christmas Eve.
Lots of children's books making it to Christmas schedules, too - Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (please can someone explain Book 13 to me?), The Cat in the Hat (no comment), and - my personal favourite - Ballet Shoes. Lovely.
Less lovely but slightly more likely to be watched by anyone who isn't a 12-year-old girl is The Great Escape. Although marvellously acted, directed, etc., I implore you not to watch this film. It will destroy you. Why everyone talks about Steve McQueen on the bike like it's a good thing, is, frankly, beyond me (spoiler). Although I have been told that the book is excellent, so maybe stick to that.
Some family viewing/reading for everyone to enjoy: a new Sense & Sensibility, some Pullman adventure for Belle de Jour in Shadow in the North, and an oldie(ish) but a goldie, The Count of Monte Cristo. Musically, GB Shaw will be showing us all a good time with BBC 2's My Fair Lady on Christmas Eve, and what better excuse is there to finally getting round to reading Peter Pan than avoiding Finding Neverland on New Year's Day? Just don't let the kids read it. They'll be scarred for life.
Sam the Copywriter
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Suddenly, another year has gone by. A final Harry Potter, the promise of more Bond, and a growing addiction to stollen - that's been my 2007 in a nutshell. The future, however, looks both golden and delicious: Bond is actually published, the shops stop selling stollen (for a while), and we give you a new Marian Keyes, the plague, a bit of musical poetry, some fairly monstrous and some very funny parenting, a gangland statistician, some number-crunching Lewis Caroll stuff, and a guide for nice guys. What more could you ask from 2008? 
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