London gossip, Dickensian Christmasses and experimental castles

Welcome back to The Critic Narrated, where we bring you a selection of articles from our print issues, read aloud by their authors.

In this episode, Robert Thicknesse narrates his Man About Town column from the December/January double issue, Welcome to Londongrad; Alexander Larman laments the myth of the Victorian Christmas for this issue's sacred cow, and, in his architecture column, Charles Saumarez Smith says that Jonathan Ruffer’s daring philanthropic experiment with Auckland Castle hopes to bring a different kind of regeneration to the north-east