Wonderland - The Story of Christmas – Sky Arts

Following on from this summer’s hit Wonderland series, Sky Arts is airing a captivating new documentary, Wonderland: The Story of Christmas, on Friday 23rd December 2022.

Wonderland: The Story of Christmas will explore classic festive themes which are featured in the novels and poems written in the Golden Age of children’s literature. The authors include Charles Dickens, Hans Christian Andersen, Kenneth Grahame, J. M. Barrie, J.R.R. Tolkien, Rudyard Kipling, C.S. Lewis, Noel Streatfeild, Edith Nesbit, Dylan Thomas and John Masefield.

The programme features a special appearance by former Children’s Laureate Sir Michael Morpurgo, author of The Best Christmas Present in the World, the spellbinding tale of one soldier’s experience of the trenches and the Christmas Day Truce of 1914.

The show combines biography, literary extracts, and quotations, together with excerpts from the many films made of the work of these authors to explore what was behind these well-known Christmas stories. Wonderland: The Story of Christmas features an original orchestral score composed by Adrian Munsey.

Care, love and the hope that is offered by Christmas are recurrent themes and vividly created in Wonderland: The Story of Christmas which will premiere in the UK on Monday 19th December on Sky Arts.

• Tolkien wrote Letters from Father Christmas to his children all through their childhood, creating a Wonderland just for them. Much of his experience was dominated by his haunted memory of the First World War. Tolkien relished in the joys of his family and Christmas with them.