Here in one volume are the five Christmas stories of Charles Dickens: The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man and, of course, A Christmas Carol. There are drawings and reproductions of the title pages from the original editions, though the quality is not very good. But at £4.99 how can you complain? A Christmas Carol permanently linked both Dickens's name and that of its central character to Christmas in a manner only surpassed by Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus. It is his self-acknowledged Christmas classic and was the centrepiece of his public readings. In it he invented the spirit of Christmas - the awakening of a social conscience in a soul deadened by greed and self-interest. And while one doesn't wish to take from the accomplishment of Scrooge on Ice or the Kermit the Frog interpretation, the original is still the scariest, funniest and, yes, most heart-warming of them all. And for Charlie McCreevy or any other latter-day Scrooge visited by a ghost this Christmas, here's what you mustn't say: "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are.'