Winter Solstice Sky in London

Church Row on the eve of the winter solstice.

Usually the winter solstice falls on 21 December, but this year the exact moment - that is the moment when the night is shortest and the day longest - fell at about four o'clock in the morning on 22 December. 

So this photograph (another one taken with my mobile phone) was taken on the eve of the solstice, at 4.30pm yesterday afternoon, looking along Church Row towards St John's Hampstead Parish Church which is at least as good for its dead as for its living.