CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Christmas Present

2019 studio album by Robbie Williams

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ78310700 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Christmas Present is the twelfth studio album by English singer-songwriter Robbie Williams, and his first studio album since 2016's The Heavy Entertainment Show. It was released on 22 November 2019, and features guest appearances from Tyson Fury, Rod Stewart, Jamie Cullum, Helene Fischer and Bryan Adams. Williams performed a pair of concerts dubbed "The Robbie Williams Christmas Party" at the SSE Arena on 16 and 17 December 2019 in promotion of the album.

Background

In a Q&A with BBC Radio 2 in December 2012, Williams was asked if he would consider doing a Christmas album. "You bet", Williams stated. "I used to hate Christmas, but my wife Ayda has instilled me with Christmas spirit. It used to be a time of year that I didn't care too much for, but she loves it, loves it like a child, and because of that, I now love it, it's a very very special time of the year, and because of that, yes I'm willing to do a Christmas album, and I will do one at one point".

Williams began recording the album in June 2019, just before the final leg of his Wynn Las Vegas residency, and concluded in Vancouver in October 2019. Williams joked that he was going to call the album Achtung Bublé, a play on words of the U2 album "Achtung Baby", and in reference to Michael Bublé's "monopoly" on the Christmas music market, which he said "must end now". Williams was asked in an interview whether or not there were any plans for Bublé to sing on the album and he answered: "He sang with me on an album of mine called Swings Both Ways.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Christmas Present” as 2019 studio album by Robbie Williams. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2016, 2019, 2012—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2019-11-22. The account is most persuasive where Christmas, Present and studio can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2019 studio album by Robbie Williams. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q78310700. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2019 and 2012.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Christmas Present”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Christmas Present primary sources, The Christmas Present archive and Christmas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Christmas Present”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Christmas Present” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.