Jim's Spectacular Christmas

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With those eyebrows and bold fashion, there may be nobody as distinctive as Cradock in the TV chef arena, and she was the OG having started her career in the 1950s. Each square of light unveils a different scene: a young boy waving aloft a star; an old man whistling a tune to a caged tangerine bird; lovers feeding each other with spoons. An icon of her craft, Cradock became synonymous with Christmas cooking, due to her no-stress, cost-effective extravagance. When time’s up we’re ushered out along the corridors to a staircase that museum staff have identified as the exact one that Scheffler has depicted, where an excited gaggle of east London schoolchildren awaits. Drawn in by its lit windows, the heartbroken figure is comforted by the various tableaux on show – one cold, dark night after another.

I thought she was still very young but you describe her as round, so I made her a little bit more – well – round,” says Scheffler. It’s the first time they’ve all been together in a long time, as siblings Ross, Clemmie and Alice all live down south. Scheffler still has the letter and has brought it along 34 years later to an interview to mark their first literary collaboration, on a children’s picture book, Jim’s Spectacular Christmas. As well as starring on the big screen, Emma is well known for her screenplays, including her 1995 hit Sense and Sensibility. Morgan has merged six separate stories seamlessly into this funny, and often poignant, book that will thaw even the biggest Grinch’s heart.It was like a circus trick, but the thing I really loved was that she had an unwrapped dog biscuit in her handbag. I have a vague notion of what you charge for your work, which doesn’t seem to me to be enough,” it went on. As well as adapting the joyful Nurse Matilda books into ther successful Nanny McPhee films in which she played the lead, she has written beautiful books for the Beatrix Potter estate, gently updating the author’s voice. It was Thompson who brought Scheffler in on Jim’s Spectacular Christmas, having already written the story, complete with character sketches, and folded them up into a little book.

On what readers, young and old, should take away from reading Jim’s Spectacular Christmas, Emma replied: “I think it's a nice thing to read.This year, we are introduced to Sky Terran, a woman in flux – she’s just lost a job she loved, and has moved back to the town of Middledip, where she had happy memories as a child. This prompts a bit of banter between the duo as to what else she might have kept in her omnipresent bag: carrots for the royal horses, perhaps. Though they never actually met in person, they exchanged gifts on the birth of their first children; hers to him was a food hamper; his to her was a picture of a pig wheeling a pram.

Not expecting to have much to do with her nearby neighbour Daz or the community as a whole, she braces herself for a quiet Christmas on her own – until her neighbours on Winter Street cajole her into joining the street decoration competition. She draws the vowel out into a camp diphthong as part of a running joke with Scheffler as to which of them will seem most exciting to the children for whom their new book is intended: the actor who starred as Nanny McPhee and now as Mrs Trunchbull in the film of Matilda the Musical or the illustrator of the mega-selling Gruffalo books. Enter Lucy: she’s fighting to save her job, and ends up stranded at the Miller family home while on a business trip.She said: “It’s actually about canine conscience…because he does something that makes him feel guilty.

The card, drawn to Cole’s design by his artist friend John Horsley, still exists and copying it has given Scheffler an unprecedented opportunity to depict a child drinking wine: “That’s really not allowed in children’s books,” he points out. This latest collective – with foreword by Felicity Cloake – brings together fairly handy tips (and plenty of hilariously useless tips in the modern day) with helpful diagrams. Are you even hosting this Christmas if you haven’t already flicked through the Food Network channel for inspiration? Then she trumps it, by announcing that she still has the envelope in which Scheffler sent the two pictures. And if you have, you’re sure to have stumbled upon festive matriarch Fanny Cradock and her myriad of seasonally instructional shows.So I always go, if I'm writing something for children, generally speaking, I go and do it in Scotland, because it's quiet. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties.