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Hello and welcome to The Edition, the Spectator's weekly podcast, discussing some of the most important and intriguing issues within our pages each week with the writers behind them.

I'm Cindy Yu.

How do you and your family spend Christmas?

In the Christmas issue of The Spectator, broadcaster and author Jars Brandreth writes about the generation's old traditions in his

family of playing games and reciting poetry. In this episode of The Edition at Christmas,

the Spectator's Features Editor and Resident Board Games fanatic Will Moore speaks to Giles and

Mark Mason, author of The Importance of Being Trivial, about their favourite Christmas traditions.

Giles, please, tell us about the long-standing Christmas traditions that you have in your family.

Well, I suppose they revolve really around my father and my upbringing. My father was born in

2010, so he was almost an Edwardian. He actually was born just after Edward I've died, and he rather regretted that.

But it means that he was brought up before the era of radio, before television, before films had sound.

And so he and his sisters and his brother, they made their own entertainment at Christmas.

They sang songs around the piano, they told stories, they recited poems, and they played games.

They played parlour games, and they played particularly board games.

My father taught me a game called LaTac, and people of my father's generation, people who

served either in the first or the Second World War.

This was a very popular French game in origin.

It was a war game.

...