Everything in Chorlton Bookshop moves up a gear from about October. We’ll have already ordered the Christmas cards and gift wrap, while Jo, who buys the books, will have been through all the festive new releases and compiled a gigantic shopping list.

The big focus, though is the Christmas window. “When your shop is all about escapism and firing the imagination, we try to create a window that reflects that same magic,” says Victoria Johnson, the shop’s owner. “We know our customers really enjoy seeing it, so we work very hard on it.”

We’re delighted to have won the Civic Society’s Christmas Window trophy a number of times over the years. There have been winter woodlands and ice skaters; Santa and the Snowman; Inuits, a little match girl and even a working train set.  

The 2025 window? You’ll have to wait and see.

Victoria designs and builds every Christmas window display, with work starting as early as October. She’s a gifted craftswoman, photographer and artist with a talent for styling.

Everything in the window is handmade, from barn owls crafted out of old books to a woodcutter’s cottage made of pallets and a particularly scary plasticine Scrooge face. She’ll also spend ages working out the mechanics of how the window will work. How do you make a real carpet (with a full-sized model of a child sitting on it) look like it’s really flying?

The shop team say they can always tell it’s coming up to Christmas, because weird things start arriving in the post.  It might be a disembodied hand, a pair of slippers, fake fur or boxes bursting with sparkles: that’s Victoria, gathering treasures from Ebay and Etsy. The whole place is full of props and treasures – there’s a polar bear in the shed and a reindeer in the cellar!

And the secret behind winning the Christmas Window Trophy? “A lot of late nights – and miles and miles of fishing line!”