At Persephone Books the start of a new year was celebrated in a rather delightful way: in the late 1970s we, accompanied by our friend B, found this coffee pot/jug in a junk shop, and rather than quarrelling over who had it we agreed that we would each have it for two or three years and then swop; which has happened many times in the intervening years, and this week the jug was brought from Cambridge to Bath until the next time it’s exchanged. (Fittingly, in the background of the photograph is a landscape painting by the  – unknown because female –  painter Jane de Glehn.)

We have tried hard not to read the news, and of course in mid-January something that distracts and preoccupies thousands of us in a good way is – marmalade. This was the subject of the Persephone Post last week. One of the illustrations was this beautiful, new to us, painting by Roger Fry: The Breakfast Table c. 1918, it's at the Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Also The Oxford Sausage was fascinating about the origins of Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade here. And, from Country Living magazine, this is an excellent marmalade cake (apologies, after decades of trying to keep up, we still turn grams into ounces): beat together 8 oz butter and 8 oz sugar, add 3 beaten eggs, 3 oz yogurt, 2 oz milk, 3 oz ground almonds, 5 oz self-raising flour and a teaspoon of baking powder – and 2 tablespoons marmalade. (A sugary orange syrup poured over it when it’s out of the oven makes it even more delicious, but messier: people in shops or offices like us might prefer to avoid a sticky finish.) 

They even made marmalade in the 1970s Upstairs, Downstairs that’s been getting us through January. It’s glorious, and very interesting historically (although they were all peculiarly calm when Lady Marjory was drowned on the Titanic). Other comforting things to listen to/watch: the return of Call the Midwife on Sunday evenings (slightly feeble, alas), and the two part documentary about Victoria Wood (which ends with the glorious ‘Let’s Do It’ here). Also some of us, being very late indeed to the party, have just begun on the 650 episodes of the podcast The Rest is History. We have also seen the touching David Attenborough documentary about wildlife in London and a very good film about Clarice Cliff called The Colour Room (hence she was on the Post the week before last), here is the trailer.  

Last week we reread There Were No Windows for the Wednesday evening book group: it’s about a woman with dementia and my goodness what a brilliant and unusual book it is. The dialogue is particularly sparkling and lifelike and why it hasn’t yet been turned into a play by someone doing an MA in scriptwriting is a mystery. 

This week Elizabeth Day’s Daylight Book Club is beginning its reading of Persephone Book No. 152, Crooked Cross. The questions to mull over (eg ‘in the first section, how do the characters’ pre-political hopes and identities set up tension for what comes next?') are spot on and it will be fascinating to see people’s response. But, as ever, our joy about the rediscovery of one of our titles is tinged with sadness that the author could not see it. The majority of our authors died thinking their work was completely forgotten. A few had the excitement of being praised in their lifetime eg. Winifred Watson and Diana Athill, one or two are still alive and (we hope) enjoying the praise eg. Adam Fergusson, and some remained famous in their lifetime eg Lion Feuchtwanger, Noel Streatfeild and Monica Dickens. But most of us writers are used to the fact that our work is forgotten and should it, miraculously, ever be rediscovered, we shall most likely not be around to enjoy the attention. Dorothy Whipple is a particularly sad case in point. But it’s true of most Persephone writers. Hey ho. 

Readers of the Letter who look at Instagram will have seen that the sequel to Crooked Cross, The Prisoner, has now gone to the printer and may be pre-ordered here. Yes, indeed, it’s relentless at Persephone Books! We have now started work on the October book and are meanwhile planning the April Pamphlet. But there are fun distractions from all the hard work, one outstanding one was last week’s concert in memory of the pianist Alfred Brendel. This was full of glorious things, the standout being the Takács Quartet playing Schubert with Ed Dusinberre, the first violin, being particularly memorable. He has written two books, both of which are now on our TBR shelf, and they will chime in beautifully with the book we have just read, Kate Kennedy’s Cello which is about the search for a few outstanding cellos which had been lost by their original owner: a very unusual book, not unlike the glorious Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton in its tone, its mixture of the personal and the rigorous, and its individuality, one might say eccentricity.

Lucky NYC readers can go to the exhibition of paintings by Gabriele Münter at the Guggenheim, here is Still Life on the Tram (After Shopping) (c.1909-12), normally at the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation in Munich:

Two of our endpapers (for They Can’t Ration These and The Woman Novelist and Other Stories) were based on designs by Alma Ramsay-Hosking and now her daughter Sarah has written a book about the excellent Hosking Houses Trust: how she came to set it up and how it has nurtured dozens of women writers by giving them somewhere to stay at no charge.

The news is so terrible that this Letter has to be politics-free or we would all go nuts. But do read this article by Charlotte Higgins about the assault on the Smithsonian.

We were absolutely shocked when we read here that the critic Lara Feigel lost custody of her son when she and her husband divorced. Now she has written Custody: The Secret History of Mothers and it is compulsively readable. Most of us would assume that unless the mother is mentally ill she should always retain custody. This is not what lawyers think and the law allows them to favour the father seemingly on a whim.

The novelist Andrew Miller, author of the wonderful The Land in Winter, did a ‘Books of my Life’ in the Guardian and said: 'The author I reread is EM Forster. He communicates a deep sanity in his novels, and an urgent and still very relevant call to emotional maturity and openness. Where Angels Fear to Tread – early and quite slight – is a big favourite. All his themes are there. Also, A Room with a View. He’s an author whose strong, calm voice – never shrill – we need to hear more of.' (A personal note: it's now 32 years since the writer of this Letter wrote a biography of Forster in an effort to get him recognised as the greatest novelist of the twentieth century. She failed. Most people would still mention Woolf, Joyce or Proust. But they would be so wrong. Yes, please do email your protests to info@persephonebooks, nevertheless we Forsterians won't budge from our position.)

The snowdrops will be flowering very soon. Somerset readers with a car can make for the Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival on 20-21st February (although if this warm weather continues one imagines it will have to be brought forward a couple of weeks).

 An exhibition called Poster Power! opens tomorrow at Bath’s Victoria Art Gallery. Since 1930s posters are, along with bentwood furniture and daffodils in a milk bottle, the aesthetic mainstay of Persephone Books, we cannot wait to see it. The beautiful Shell poster pictured below by Bath-dwellers Clifford and Rosemary Ellis is in the exhibition, and also in the V and A; we actually have it for sale but the price for posters is now so enormous (significantly into four figures), exactly as we anticipated 25 years ago when we started selling them in Lamb's Conduit Street, that nowadays we sell very few. A beautiful book for £15 is better value by miles and miles. 

Finally, yes, apologies, we are ending on a political note: anyone who reads books, and presumably that includes all the readers of this Letter, must watch the terrifying documentary The Librarians about the censorship of books in America.

Nicola Beauman

8 Edgar Buildings, Bath