Like many of us, I always enjoy the John Lewis Christmas advert and 2026 is no different. This year, I love the fact that the star of the show is a grandmother.

Feeling disconnected from her visiting grandchildren and ready to resort to cash in envelopes for Christmas, Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas) is scolded by her childhood toy dog Pickles, who comes to life and whisks her on a whirlwind London TukTuk ride. Inspired, Gloria transforms her home office into a glittering, disco-lit “gran cave”, bridging the generation gap by sharing her sense of wonder with her grandchildren.

We can’t all have grandmothers as chic as Gloria, but many of us were lucky enough to have grans who loved us just as much — and we probably took them as much for granted. I suspect many grans feel like an old-fashioned back boiler, half-invisible in the background, but warming the family without anyone noticing. Sociologists often refer to this as “kinkeeping”: the often........

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