ALT Caption: The days of one man making a list, checking it twice, and finding out who's naughty or nice, are long gone: today, all Father Christmas's behaviour/gift decisions are calculated by a quantum supercomputer. Image: elf and reindeer scientists operate an enormous computer. On screen is a graph. The x-axis is labelled 'Behaviour' and is marked Very Naughty, Somewhat Naughty, Neutral, Somewhat Nice and Very nice. The y-axis is labelled 'Gifts' and is marked None, Few, Some, Many and Loads. A red line curves through the graph.

ALT Title: The John Le Carré Advent Calendar - Available in all good bookshops. Description - December 1st to 23rd: open the door to watch Gerorge Smiley reluctantly uncover a conspiracy as he wanders around the damp, dilapidated London of the seventies. (images of six of the doors, showing a stick figure os Smiley going about his business in shades of browny-gray) December 24th: Having solved the mystery and written his resignation letter, Smiley eats Christmas dinner alone. (image of Smiley at a table with a letter, unappetising portion of food and glass of wine, in browny-gray)

ALT Image: A bedroom at night, a face is lit up by the glow of a phone screen displaying cat memes. On the book-cluttered bedside table, three books look on angrily. The lead book waves a large knife and says: "Nobody needs to get hurt... Let's just put the phone down, nice and slowly..." Caption: Bedside reading pile turns nasty

ALT Title: Halloween costumes for pretentious children. Image: Small children smile cheerily wearing costumes depicting the following: The bloody axe from Fyodor Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'. The cholera epidemic from Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice' The dead tree that gives no shelter from T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland' The trauma of the first world war in Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway'