Christmas at Christ Church has become as much a part of the local festive season as mulled wine and mince pies, and this year’s offering, in what is arguably Oxford’s most stunning venue, demonstrated why this event sells out year after year.

As always, this was a fascinating exploration of Christmas music and prose spanning several centuries, and touching on both the familiar and the unfamiliar.

The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, who impressed so greatly at the Oxford Philomusica concert last weekend, were once again in exceptional form, whether tackling John Rutter’s sublime setting of the Wexford Carol (Good People All, this Christmas Time), the tricky Jacob’s Ladder or having fun with Bob Chilcott’s quirky arrangement of The Twelve Days of Christmas.

A highlight for me was Peter Cornelius’s stirring The Three Kings, a beautiful carol brought magnificently to life with some particularly fine solo singing and glorious harmonising from the choir.

There were also some wonderful solo voices in A Shepherd’s Carol, Benjamin Britten’s setting of a text by W.H. Auden.

Conductor Stephen Darlington was in supreme control at all times, ensuring a good, clear sound from the choir, with crisp diction and beautifully sculpted phrasing.

Actor Jeremy Irons replaced Jean Marsh as the reader at short notice, and this might have explained why, in the first half at least, his readings sounded under-rehearsed and several times he stumbled over his wording.

He did manage to capture the poignancy of the Christmas Day truce in the trenches, but it wasn’t until the second half that he really seemed to come to life, clearly enjoying the humorous account of a Yorkshire man not quite understanding the Messiah, and another of Noah offering God multifarious excuses for the Ark not being finished on time.

But even a world-famous film star couldn’t overshadow the cathedral choir and, as always, they made the occasion very much their own. Glorious.