Many of our best-loved and most moving Christmas carols started life as poems in search of a tune. Andrew Green uncovers the writers whose works were nearly forgotten, yet are now imprinted on the memory.
They are the ghosts of Christmas past and present: the barely considered wordsmiths whose lines adorn the time-honoured favourite carols that coax even the most vocally timid of us into a wintry warble. Most of us, however, have a passing acquaintance with one…
