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You think “November Rain,” you think: a tiny white chapel, a hugely expensive video, a wailing guitar solo at the edge of a cliff. You think: impassioned vocals, one of the longest songs to hit the charts - and the most ambitious moment in Guns N’ Roses’ career. In short, you think: arguably the best rock ballad in history. Though it took until September 1991 for the song to be released, on Use Your Illusion I, “November Rain” had by that point been in Axl Rose’s arsenal for almost a decade. Former Rose bandmate and LA Guns guitarist Tracii Guns has recalled that Axl began working on the song in 1983, while the recent super deluxe and Locked N’ Loaded editions of Appetite For Destruction have revealed that it was once considered for release on GNR’s incendiary debut album. ‘Oh! Seeming more like a short movie than it did a music promo, the video was conceived as the middle part of a trilogy bookended by the videos for “Don’t Cry” and “Estranged.” Starring supermodel and Axl’s then-girlfriend, Stephanie Seymour, it followed on from where “Don’t Cry” left off: Seymour had saved Axl from suicide, and now the two were getting married.

Taking in the couple’s doomed wedding (with Slash’s guitar solo performed outside a church in the New Mexico desert), the band hanging at the Rainbow Bar And Grill on LA’s Sunset Strip, and a live performance of the song at The Ritz in New York, the video took for its inspiration a short story, “Without You,” written by journalist and author of the short-story collection The Language Of Fear, Del James. With a budget totaling around $1 million, the “November Rain” video ranks among the most expensive music promos ever made. While it might not have had the same career-boosting impact of the “Welcome To The Jungle” video, at the time of its release, “November Rain” quickly became MTV’s most-requested video of all time - and, on 14 July, officially hit one billion views on YouTube. An integral part of the song’s history, the video has helped the song not just become one of Guns N’ Roses’ definitive moments, but arguably the greatest rock ballad in history.

Many families will all have a loved one absent from their festive dining table. Here, four writers share their poignant and very different stories. Sooner or later it comes to us all, the empty places round the Christmas table. Our Christmas lunch has survived everything from the late arrival of the turkey, through minor illnesses, to divorce. I always prided myself that we were - are - still a family despite our divorce about seven years ago, so I have carried on with all our family traditions, the stockings, and my ex-husband at the Christmas, Boxing Day-and-a-few-days-beyond lunch table (I got to his house on Christmas Eve, where Miranda cooks and I have the night off). We have not suffered the agony of alternate years, of shuttling children between us and pretending the Christmas spirit hasn’t departed early as we tearfully leave our children with the ex. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but I felt we needed continuity at any cost.

What should Kate wear for the Queen? We were still a family, so birthdays and special school events were better shared than having one parent missing or missing out. Not easy, but then neither is marriage or parenthood! However crazy train guitar tabs is, I have enjoyed every last second of the planning - from stir-up Sunday through waiting up later than my three to drag the stuffed stockings outside their doors and go to sleep knowing that my barely concealed excitement is every bit as evident as theirs. And since they were teenagers, I’ve had a stocking, too, which they fill with inventive and original presents they’ve made, bought or painted. This year is the first year we will not all sit down together with the old table decorations I inherited from my parents, the crackers and the waifs and strays who have been as important to us as the family, be they children’s friends who can’t go home, the nanny who looked after them for years and her husband, a prisoner in a half-way house or their grandparents who are now dead.
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