The 19 pages of festive verse are paired with beautiful but understated illustrations from Yelena Bryksenkova. She draws the vowel out into a camp diphthong as part of a running joke with Scheffler as to which of them will seem most exciting to the children for whom their new book is intended: the actor who starred as Nanny McPhee and now as Mrs Trunchbull in the film of Matilda the Musical or the illustrator of the mega-selling Gruffalo books. As well as adapting the joyful Nurse Matilda books into ther successful Nanny McPhee films in which she played the lead, she has written beautiful books for the Beatrix Potter estate, gently updating the author’s voice.

He was playing Hamlet to her sister Sophie’s Ophelia and she wanted something to commemorate a moment in time. Carol Ann Duffy’s unnamed subject is brought to Advent Street by bad luck, and spends December pacing its pavements: alone, unseen and silent. This prompts a bit of banter between the duo as to what else she might have kept in her omnipresent bag: carrots for the royal horses, perhaps.

I thought she was still very young but you describe her as round, so I made her a little bit more – well – round,” says Scheffler.

It's something to make you feel cosy at Christmas time, thinking about family and thinking about Christmas cards. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer ‘The question is not if, but when they will collaborate again’: Emma Thompson and Axel Scheffler.The guilt present, that guilt gift, the fact that you feel guilty because you're not with your parents, auntie, siblings, Christmas is just a time that's absolutely built for guilt. Not expecting to have much to do with her nearby neighbour Daz or the community as a whole, she braces herself for a quiet Christmas on her own – until her neighbours on Winter Street cajole her into joining the street decoration competition. The dynamics between all of the characters and their backstories stops Christmas On Winter Street from being overly sweet, and keeps it relatable. With those eyebrows and bold fashion, there may be nobody as distinctive as Cradock in the TV chef arena, and she was the OG having started her career in the 1950s. He wrote and narrated The Magic Roundabout, which targeted families as a whole, rather than just little ones.

As well as starring on the big screen, Emma is well known for her screenplays, including her 1995 hit Sense and Sensibility. The card, drawn to Cole’s design by his artist friend John Horsley, still exists and copying it has given Scheffler an unprecedented opportunity to depict a child drinking wine: “That’s really not allowed in children’s books,” he points out. That’s amazing,” says Thompson of the letter, which predates her six-year marriage to Branagh and was written from the flat they shared in 1988. So I always go, if I'm writing something for children, generally speaking, I go and do it in Scotland, because it's quiet. Then she trumps it, by announcing that she still has the envelope in which Scheffler sent the two pictures.Other historical details include the small printing press on which the cards were produced for Cole, an innovator who was also instrumental in introducing the world’s first postage stamp, the penny black. The question is not if, but when, Thompson and Scheffler will collaborate again – they circle around the idea during the interview as if neither can quite believe that the other would actually stoop to it. On what readers, young and old, should take away from reading Jim’s Spectacular Christmas, Emma replied: “I think it's a nice thing to read. From that inglorious beginning he goes on to become part of the 19th-century invention of Christmas, presenting Queen Victoria with the world’s first commercial Christmas card.