Christmas in Shakespeare’s day was an extravagant festival that included a long season of merrymaking, feasting and, most important of all, masques and plays.

Shakespeare’s Christmas is a delightful glimpse into an Elizabethan Christmas, comprising little-known stories – such as the time Elizabeth I interrupted Shakespeare’s performance by walking across the stage and dropping a glove at his feet – recipes of traditional Elizabethan desserts, ballads and poems.

A must-read if you are interested in the ignoble goings-on of the Lord of Misrule and a chance to immerse yourself in the celebrations of a Shakespearean Christmas.

The late MARIA HUBERT (1945-2007) was a cofounder of The Christmas Archives with her husband Andrew. She combined a love of history, folk custom, literature and research with knowledge of Latin, Greek, Spanish and Catalan learned in convents in the UK and Spain. A well-qualified cook, a great deal of her love for Christmas was born of her Yorkshire Christmas food customs. She was a frequent guest on radio and television in the UK, gaining extra fame in Japan with the launch of a Christmas museum in Hokkaido. ANDREW HUBERT is an expert in the history of Christmas, with over 40 years’ involvement with exhibitions, TV & radio programmes. He co-founded ‘The Christmas Archives’ alongside his late wife Maria. Together they created literary-themed festive books to delight fans of classic authors such as Jane Austen and the Brontës, a series which Andrew is now updating and expanding.