About this issue: Overview
Season’s greetings
To our vendors you are much more than a customer. You’re a friendly face in a crowd, a warm word on a cold day, an English teacher, a friend, and often a lifeline. The sellers of the magazine in the North West wish you all a happy Christmas. Next week, vendors from Yorkshire and Humber.
They won’t be home for Christmas
Thousands of Ukrainian war refugees are living in the North. Maria Romanenko asks them how they’ll be spending their first Christmas in this country.
Yule be frightened
Why is Christmas, with all its comfort and joy, so closely bound up with ghost stories? John Reppion and Matt Badham speak to the experts and find that both the celebratory and the scary offer methods of dealing with the bleak winter’s darkness.
A rapper and a businesswoman walk into a pub
When the Golden Lion pub in Todmorden shut during lockdown the community felt the loss of the music it brought to the valley. Christian Lisseman hears about the creative way managers kept it alive – by launching its own record label.
A hard bargain
Chris Voss saved the lives of countless hostages during his career as an FBI negotiator, while others were lost in tragic circumstances. He tells Mark Lomas some of the techniques he deployed in life-or-death situations have everyday applications.
Popcorn politics
A group of hobbyist filmmakers from Bradford experienced the uncomfortable reality of being on the other side of the lens for a new documentary. But as Christian Lisseman finds, they’re much more than just a bunch of amateurs.
Poverty is not just for Christmas
In Huddersfield, as in the rest of the country, food banks are facing growing demand from a wider range of people in need. Fundraising manager Emma Greenough tells Susan Griffin that short-term crisis is turning into longer-term poverty.
Plus
News, arts and entertainment, columnists James Meadway and Saskia Murphy, actor David Jason’s letter to his younger self and more.