Everybody has their own Christmas traditions. One of mine is listening to Olivier Messiaen’s great organ cycle “La Nativité du Seigneur”—the cycle is dark and knotty in places, which makes the final explosion of joy even more astounding. The other is reading T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi.”

By now, readers may have noticed that I am something of a devotee of Eliot. That is not just because I regard him as the greatest poet of the last century, but because he has always meant so much to me personally.

I first read this poem as a schoolboy and have read it a number of times in recent years at carol services. Although it is a long poem, I can do almost all of it by heart. And I love having it there. It is a proper Christmas poem—and one for grown-ups.