This year’s ad is actually about going shopping and features Oxford Street store plus song by Richard Ashcroft

Over the years its Christmas adverts have featured a menagerie of lovable creatures but this year John Lewis is tugging on heartstrings with a Narnia-inspired tale of two sisters that for the first time gives its struggling department stores a starring role.

After last year’s lighthearted outing featuring a cheeky Venus flytrap , the ad is a distinct gear-change. It was filmed in John Lewis’s high-profile store on Oxford Street in London and, at a time when the high street is facing severe headwinds, for once it is actually about going Christmas shopping – without a lovable penguin or snowman in sight.