The retail bellwether, which enjoyed record one-day sales of £50 million on December 23, grew same-store sales by 0.8% in the 13 weeks to December 26.

This is slightly below City hopes but M&S added that including the first day of its sales on December 27 would have added a further 1% to like-for-like sales growth.

The update comes after rivals Next and John Lewis posted better-than-expected trading figures for the festive season.

But M&S added that it expected trading to remain challenging this year due to "continuing economic uncertainty".

M&S was trading against far easier comparisons than in 2008, when it registered a 7.1% fall in same-store sales at the height of the recession - its worst performance since 1999.

Today’s growth continues the run of improving sales trends seen since then, despite a difficult year for the business.

M&S saw general merchandise sales - including clothes - up 1.2% as the group refused to cut prices in the run-up to Christmas in contrast with last year’s two one-day pre-Christmas sales to tempt in hard-pressed shoppers.

Food sales were 0.4% ahead of a year earlier as shoppers bought more than 36 million mince pies and a million bottles of champagne.