The Night Before Christmas

A couple of days after the despatch of my copy for the Current ‘Classics in Short’ (nicely written out on yellow paper) I received this new illustrated version of Moore’s ballad, first published in the USA. It is hardly a runner in the Christmas Stakes though, being so handicapped by its weight of heavily-coloured pages that it doesn’t get out of the stalls. The verses are rationed to four lines per 11 x 22 inch page-opening and are surrounded by a brain-numbing clutter of largely irrelevant subjects including about half the population of Elfland. If anyone is likely to enjoy the results it will be those exuberant folk who defy the Kyoto potocols and illuminate their demesnes with a million coloured lights from Guy Fawke’s Day to Easter.