We start this month’s Persephone Letter, a bit eccentrically, by paying tribute to a nicely designed 1950s brick bus shelter. 

It was going to be demolished (at dead of night apparently) by Norfolk County Council and was then saved for the nation by a group of local people who have now won the C20th Society Activist of the Year award. However, sadly, as of this weekend the Council are having another attempt to knock it down and the activists will once more be camping in the bus station overnight. Let's hope that very very rapidly it is given a grade 2 listing and be saved for the nation. 

Alas, the C20th Society magazine also had a piece about something that was demolished last week: Bath's fire station. ‘Ministers have rejected Heritage England’s advice to list this fire station. A 1930s classical Art Deco building, it was a rare pre-war project by a female architect, Molly Taylor, and played a crucial role in the Bath ‘Baedeker’ air raids of 1942.’ We think bitterly of the buildings demolished by Bath council in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, until it was persuaded to rethink its policy by, among others, Adam Fergusson and his The Sack of Bath, now Persephone Book no. 93.

Which leads on to the interesting link between preserving old buildings and preserving old books and thence to the question of taste. What is taste? Who decides? Who decides what is demolished and what is treasured, what is forgotten and what is reprinted? Is it just instinct or are there rules? Is it because of taste that we have ‘only’ published 154 books out of the thousands and thousands out there; or that we don’t ‘get’ Barbara Pym (we went to the Arcola Theatre to see the play based on Quartet in Autumn but still couldn’t understand why it was good, a bit like this reviewer or why, as Susannah Clapp said in the Observer, it's funny that 'Pym makes office life the main point of her characters' existence while being itself pointless')? Oh well, one has to accept that tastes differ. Is it taste that dictated the recent Guardian list of 100 best novels? Surely not, since it seemed mainly to consist of books people read for A Level years ago or feel they should have read (Middlemarch and Howards End the two exceptions from our p.o.v).  

Usefully, the Guardian ran a good article about taste and of course it might simply be defined as knowing what one likes and doesn’t like. This makes things easier for people who don’t share one’s taste. In other words, one of the points of all our titles having the same grey, uniform look is that it’s a signal: this is a Persephone book, if you like one you probably like them all. But if you don’t like it/them, turn away now. In this respect the grey is unselfishly time-saving, both for the people who do like all (or most) of our books and the people who don’t. In the same way people who follow ‘influencers’ either like their taste, and approve of what they promote, or they don’t and don’t bother with them. Alas, all these value judgements can lead to snobbery and even discord and eventually to an ideological clash and, ultimately, to political division. Sorry, we promise to keep off politics. But please please watch Max Porter giving the 2026 PEN lecture here; read Jane Brocket’s substack here; and read Amelia  Gentleman about Peter Mandelson’s language and what it tells us about the 'system' (it's wrecked).

Of course other people’s taste can often be confusing. We have just read the latest volume of Alan Bennett’s excellent diaries and rather oddly his almost favourite novel is Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love (his agent managed to find a first edition to give him on his ninetieth birthday, lucky chap). It’s one of our very favourite books too, partly because it is so funny (rare for a novel), nevertheless we feel a bit ashamed of loving it because Nancy Mitford was such a vicious snob, the Mitfords in general were so terrible (well not Debo or Jessica) and Howards End it ain’t. However, in our eyes Alan Bennett can do no wrong so in future we are going to admit to adoring The Pursuit of Love and let it sit unashamed in our top ten novels.

Could it be that snobbery is the reason for Britain’s difficulties? (A rhetorical question.) We were sad to see that Prince George is going to go to Eton. This wouldn’t happen in a much more egalitarian society/country like the Netherlands. Here, apparently, children are happier than anywhere else in the world. One can see why. Read here about their annual Avondvierdaagse. How imaginative! How brilliant! In fact, much as we love the King, and the Queen, we do wish they would become a bit more, well, Dutch. 

Delightfully, The Times newsletter wrote about Persephone Book no. 3 Someone at a Distance last week, calling it a 'superbly subtle portrait of a family splitting apart: furious, miserable teenagers; a wife wrecked and suddenly poor; and of course the villainous “other woman”, whom the novel takes the trouble to make sympathetic. It’s a domestic drama that also reads like an allegory for the traumatic years Europe had just endured: bucolic rural life torn asunder; men lured away by France; women’s lives transformed for ever. Dorothy Whipple is lesser known today among the gang of brilliant mid-century British women writers with misleadingly cutesy names, but she shouldn’t be. This is a beautiful, shattering and under-appreciated novel.' (Not under-appreciated by us, of course.)

When we put the paragraph on Instagram and Facebook there were several wonderful comments about people’s love for Dorothy Whipple. In fact the Dutch Review of Books has just published a panegyric, calling on Dutch publishers to start translating her. One reason they don’t of course is that the kind of Dutch reader who would appreciate Dorothy Whipple will invariably have shamingly perfect English.

And from the C20th Century magazine again, a review of PB no. 49 Bricks and Mortar, describing it as 'a gentle novel by Helen Ashton, originally published in 1932 and elegantly reissued by Persephone Books. It is a tenderly subtle saga about an architect and his family, which offers a remarkable historical source for its keen eye on generational shifts in architectural culture and practise from the 1890s to the 1930s.'

This is the original 1932 cover; our edition is grey of course.

This week we have been reading Susie Boyt, Ella Risbridger, Elizabeth Strout and Somerset Maugham (his plays, including For Services Rendered), all marvellous. We shall be going to see the newly released film of Night and Day, trailer here. And the book we are reading next was recommended by Emma Thompson at the Hay Festival, it’s called The Chalice and the Blade, and it seems be on a theme (cf. above) Max Porter, Jane Brocket, Amelia Gentleman, Alan Bennett and all our favourite writers would approve of, which is that violence and bullying (the blade) rather than the chalice (the loving cup, cups of tea, talking things over) have blighted all our lives for centuries and things have to change. Well, we couldn’t agree more.

Finally, we are looking forward to visiting the new Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, which is (to return to where this Letter started) in a beautifully preserved brick building.

Nicola Beauman,

8 Edgar Buildings,

Bath.