| 1923-50 1951-78 1979-2007 This section contains all Christmas Radio Times covers from 1923 to 2007. Christmas Day BBC television schedules are available for the years 1936 onwards in the Christmas Years section of Telly Years.
The Christmas edition of Radio Times and its illustrated cover has become as much a tradition as Christmas itself. In over eighty years of publication, only nine times has the festive cover featured a full page photograph. Full colour illustrations appeared on the Christmas cover right from the offset in 1923. Three depictions of family gatherings were succeeded by some rather more dramatic and avant garde offerings; but Paul Nash's 1930 cover hardly seems very festive! Lavishly decorated covers continued right through the 1930s until the outbreak of war. From now on colour would be limited to the odd splash of red. The wartime Christmas covers reflected the times, most notably in 1940 with John Gilroy's tin-hatted Santa, and in 1943 CW Bacon's poignant image of a soldier holding a sprig of holly sent from home. 1923-50 1951-78 1979-2007 TELLY YEARS: Christmas Years | 
