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Hello and welcome to the edition. The spectators look at some of the most intriguing and important issues within the week's magazine.

I'm Laura Prendergast. On this episode, we're looking at our Christmas special.

The new issue is packed with brilliant writing from contributors including Richard Dawkins,

Ian Rankin, Susan Hill, Alec Baldwin and Dominic Cummings.

So over the next hour, we'll give you a showcase of the very best in our pages.

We'll start with politics.

How will the UK's economy recover from COVID-19?

And what has the pandemic revealed about the West?

Then we'll turn to vaccines.

They're hopefully the way out of this crisis

and we'll find out whether a new delivery method

used in the Pfizer jab has dealt a mortal blow to future

viruses. And finally, we'll cover the books that made 2020, Sam Leith interview with Mary

Gateskill, and why the writer Ella Shafak listens to heavy metal while she works.

First up, politics. In the Christmas issue, Fraser Nelson and Katie Balls interview

the Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

He tells them that more government borrowing would be morally wrong, and he also talks about

his experience of hill farming. James Forsyth, meanwhile, writes about how COVID has woken the West

up to the threat posed by China. To talk about their pieces and to give us a roundup of the year, I'm joined by

...