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For some people, it is the arrival of the first card; for others the visit of Santa and a minor celebrity to switch on the town's lights.

On All Things Considered (Sunday 2 December at 8.32am, repeated Wednesday 5 December at 6.32pm), we know that Christmas is alarmingly close when our annual book review comes around.

Each of Roy Jenkins' guests has brought along a favourite, and they've also worked through three books which we have chosen for them.

Unusually, this year all three are called biographies, although we will explore whether they all qualify for the description.

Those who've been busy reading on our behalf are the historian Elin Jones; Catholic priest Nick James; and David Melding who is a member of the Welsh Assembly.

The books being reviewed are:

• Rabble-rouser for Peace: The Authorised Biography of Desmond Tutu, written by John Allen and published by Rider & Co
• The Bible: The Biography, written by Karen Armstrong and published by Atlantic Books
• The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of R S Thomas, written by Byron Rogers and published by Aurum Press Ltd

Personal Choices:

• Martha, Jack and Shanco by Caryl Lewis, published by Parthian
• Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor, published by Faber and Faber
• God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot by Alice Hogge, published by Harper Perennial