A couple of weeks ago we mentioned to Persephone readers in an email and on Instagram that we had had lots of depressed Americans asking us for cheerful books. Two people wrote to us to say they weren’t depressed at all. That in itself was sobering. What can the rest of us, the millions and millions who feel they are teetering from one precipice to another, possibly say in riposte? Very little, except to remind ourselves that if 77 million Americans voted for the present incumbent of the White House, a few (by the law of averages) must be Persephone readers. May we just point out that if David Remnick (‘Trump’s Disgrace’) or Sidney Blumenthal (‘Sycophancy and toadying are de rigueur in Trump's court of self-aggrandizement')  had written these two pieces in Hitler’s Germany or during McCarthyism, they would be in prison or worse by now and (appalling as it is to say this) it seems to us they are totally admirable and extremely brave writing in the way they do. Eighty years ago they would by now be listed in Hitler’s Black Book along with several Persephone authors, most famously E M Forster but also Leonard Woolf, Lion Feuchtwanger and Duff Cooper, here is a selection from the list. And please, in order to keep sane, have a reread of Persephone Book no. 146, Forster's Two Cheers for Democracy.

    But luckily, in some ways, we have had a close-to-home distraction. Gilbert the office dog had developed an intense dislike of being groomed but finally his hair had got so matted that he had to be sedated while he was clipped. But the clipper, who shall be nameless because we hate them, shaved him almost sadistically and we have been in tears all week mourning the dog we used to know. Yes, yes, the hair will grow, but until it does it’s like living with a large rat. Or a hare indeed. That was the best thing last week: Chloe Dalton spoke at the Daunt Festival about her beautiful, magical book Raising Hare. She was wonderfully interviewed by Kathy Slack and we are now devouring her own book Rough Patch: How A Year in the Garden Brought Me Back to Life and will be regularly reading her Substack. 

   The other book we read was Maurice and Marilyn but that SO did not do it for us. However, a book that did was Last Chance in Paris by Linda Marron. The author sent us a copy because on page 63 it has Harry the film director wondering if the title of his latest film, Someone at a Distance, sounded arty enough. We learn that ‘it was Jenny who’d come across the novel on some nerdy blog about forgotten books. When she’d begged him to read it with a view to commissioning a script, he had laughed in her face.’ But she persevered and Harry makes the film, even finding uncomfortable parallels between himself and Avery. (Btw, if anyone is wondering: Rachel Joyce once wrote a film script of PB no. 3 Someone at a Distance for BBC4 but alas no film was ever made. Maybe the fictional Harry could transmogrify into a real life film director?) 

  Talking of women novelists: Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, about the novelists she read, and was influenced by, sounds interesting.

And here is a picture of Queen Camilla unveiling a bronze statue of Aphra Behn in Canterbury.

   Only a few weeks until the hugely successful Tirzah Garwood exhibition closes at Dulwich. Do read Engelsberg Ideas about it, beginning with his perceptive headline: ‘Tirzah Garwood's work is characterised by strangeness, meditative intensity and precision, and a deep sense of play.’ All these qualities are of course demonstrated in her autobiography PB no. 119 Long Live Great Bardfield.

    Anyone visiting London in May, June or July should make a point of seeing Fiddler on the Roof at the Barbican. It is always uplifting (despite the less than joyful themes covered in the show). And by the way, for anyone who adores Klezmer music as we do, there is a Klezmer music concert at the New Oriel Hall in Larkhall in Bath next Sunday March 23rd at 7pm. It’s music that would have been totally verboten in Germany from 1933 onwards, indeed from December 1932 when our forthcoming April book, PB no. 152 Crooked Cross begins. By the way, there are still a few tickets for our 'rehearsed reading' of the play of Crooked Cross at Bath's Ustinov Theatre on Thursday April 24th; it will be the first time audiences have seen/heard it since the curtain came down on the original West End production ninety years ago.

    Music that would not have been censored in any way will be played by our friend the harpsichord player Nathaniel Mander in our piano nobile on Saturday April 26th and there are still tickets left here. The concert will feature two 18th-century women composers, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre and Elisabetta de Gambarini, as well as J S Bach. (Well you could say that our not having come across  either of the two women is a form of censorship...)

    Next week we are going to London to see The Years having heard from several people how extraordinary it is. One of the actresses who was in it originally was Romola Garai, who was also absolutely superb in the play about Roald Dahl called Giant, she has therefore been nominated twice in the best supporting actress category at the Olivier awards. Giant reopens in the West End and is highly recommended, being fascinating about the writer himself and also about the perennial question: why, why do people hold the horrible prejudices they do? Dahl's publisher Tom Maschler was Jewish but that didn’t stop Dahl being vilely anti-semitic. 

   Anyway, to more cheerful topics. A good new exhibition has opened at No. 1 Royal Crescent called ‘The Botanical World of Mary Delany and Georgie Hopton’ which 'pairs Delany’s intricate 18th century botanical collages with contemporary works by the London-based Hopton, all set against wallpaper and fabric designs that Hopton produced with Rapture & Wright especially for the exhibition.'

 And the latest edition of the SPAB (Society of the Preservation of Ancient Buildings) magazine is about women in conservation, focused both on women working nowadays and the SPAB pioneers. Sometimes people find it confusing that we publish PB no. 93 The Sack of Bath, even though now we have actually moved here it has more rationale. But the reason is clear to us: preserving forgotten writers has many similarities with preserving neglected  buildings, and whether one reprints a writer’s books or books a holiday in a glorious Landmark Trust house or gives money to the SPAB, the motive is the same; and Persephone Books being located first in an early C18th building in London and then in a late C18th century building in Bath makes the same point.

Finally, Jane Brocket’s Substack has been on amazing form, well it always is. We particularly loved the Sunday before last when she wrote about Ukraine ('because Ukraine feels personal'). And hence the Ukrainian art on the Post last week. 

Nicola Beauman

8 Edgar Buildings

Bath.