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The Roman god Janus is about to play his annual trick on us. 31 December, the last day of the year, will be followed by 1 January, the first day of the year. We’ve ended up right back where we started. Frustrating, but at the same time reassuring. Janus, after whom the new month is named, was always pictured with two faces, one looking forward, the other back. He is the god of both beginnings and endings. The notion of returning to 1 January has always bothered me slightly, as though all that effort last year was for naught. Indeed the fact that each day of the year is a

Bernard Herrmann died 50 years ago this month. He only just lived long enough to complete the suite of instrumental jazz that’s now regarded as not only his finest work across many decades as a movie composer, but one of the greatest celluloid soundtracks of all time. There are very few movies which you can honestly state simply wouldn’t have got out of the traps were it not for the soundtrack. Taxi Driver is one of them. There’s more than enough available film critic geekery about Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro’s finest hour to plough through already. But the curious afterlife of the Taxi Driver soundtrack was something I

Deep in the backwaters of BBC iPlayer there lurks an American film with an all-star cast that time forgot. In its day I think it was all but forgotten, too – garnering some critical acclaim but bombing at the box office, presumably because it was too clever or just didn’t appeal enough to teenagers (I can’t see why). Fortunately, 25 years on, Wonder Boys, the campus-novel film starring Michael Douglas as a creative writing professor with writer’s block and an unravelling marriage, truly stands the test of time. You could even go so far as to say that it’s a modern classic. Directed by the late Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential,

Once Christmas Day’s out of the way and we’re stuck in that no man’s land between one year and the next – known, tweely, as ‘Twixmas’ or, if you’re posh, the ‘interregnum’ – one thing guaranteed to make the front pages is the announcement of the New Year’s Honours List. News of the worthy – and not-so-worthy – recipients will be released, and we’ll get to see who’s been elevated to the Lords, knighted or handed one of the lesser gongs. Among the very deserving recipients will be those who make you think: hang on a minute – how did that happen? When news broke that former prime minister Tony Blair was

The Gloucestershire yard of Ben Pauling has gone from strength to strength in recent seasons and today could see it reach a new high when the trainer sends his stable star to Kempton to compete in the Ladbrokes King George VI Chase (2.30 p.m.). THE JUKEBOX MAN will face seven talented rivals, including two hot-pots from the yard of Irish maestro Willie Mullins, when he runs in the Grade 1 contest over a distance of three miles. The Jukebox Man has plenty to find on official ratings with almost all his rivals but Pauling remains quietly confident that this lightly-raced seven-year-old gelding, owned by former football manager Harry Redknapp, is up

Christmas Day in a care home is often thought to be the saddest shift of the year: a place where staff trudge in reluctantly through the dark and cold, while the rest of the country unwraps presents and gets merry; where residents sit quietly, reminiscing about the happiness of Christmases past. And yet, for those of us who work these shifts year after year, that idea bears little resemblance to the truth. It is, strangely, one of the most joyous shifts to work. There is grief and gratitude, absence and presence, memory and forgetfulness, and moments of surprising hilarity. Someone will say something outrageous. Someone will fall asleep halfway through