Our edition of Mrs Miniver is safely published and the Christmas offer has gone out so we at Persephone Books are in our usual late November/early December mode of fulfilling orders from the website, restocking the shop, checking we have enough ribbon, re-ordering stock from the warehouse and so on and so forth. Also the Christmas Market starts in Bath in a week's time and that will make things even more hectic.

     This month has been enlivened by the marvellous Tirzah Garwood exhibition that has just opened at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Accompanied by an excellent Catalogue (we have copies available for sale), the focus specifically on Tirzah (author of course of Persephone Book No, 119, Long Live Great Bardfield) rather than on Mrs Eric Ravilious is heartwarming. And fascinating, because what an incredible artist she was – in various different mediums, primarily woodcuts, marbled paper and oil paintings but also collages, embroidered pictures, pencil drawing, quilt making and goodness knows what else.

And you could argue from reading Tirzah's book that she was a novelist manqué, for some of us think that she was a writer just as much as she was an artist. (In fact if the show had a fault, which it genuinely doesn’t, it would be that it doesn’t quote enough from Long Live Great Bardfield.) Laura Freeman wrote warmly about the exhibition in The Times and Laura Cummings wrote about it in the Observer, describing it as ‘enchanting’ and Tirzah as ‘joyous, curious, inventive and droll’. Additional Dulwich note: on Thursday November 28th we are having an informal Persephone outing to the exhibition, just buy your own ticket and from 3.30pm onwards you will find one or two of us Persephone girls in the gallery (clutching a copy of Great Bardfield). Then we might all have tea together, either in the café or at somewhere nearby in Dulwich Village.

     Here at Persephone Books we were very sad about the death of Frank Auerbach. We admired, although perhaps did not love, his work, but he was the most fascinating and admirable person. Do listen to his interview with John Wilson on This Cultural Life (a consistently excellent series) and also do read about his extraordinary school (well, more than just a school), Bunce Court, and about the headmistress Anna Essinger. Her educational methods might be described as the Montessori method for older children with nods to Bedales, Dartington and the Dalton Plan of blessed memory (at our school we were allowed to do this for a week a year; fifty-two weeks a year would have suited us better). There is a book about Bunce Court by Deborah Cadbury: even though the focus is more on the harrowing escape stories of the (mostly) Jewish pupils than on the educational methods, or non methods, the 'Essinger way' (which her approach might have been called but wasn't) shines throughout the book. Think of words like kindness, intuition, empathy rather than coercion, rules, implacability and you get the idea.

    We also mourned Ronald Blythe, author of Akenfield, when he died last year but are now so pleased that his home is going to be a nature reserve.

     It’s good news that the writer Louisa Young is to continue Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet series. What a challenge! If there is anyone reading this Letter who hasn’t read the Cazalets, you have a huge treat in store. ‘Jane’ as she was known, also wrote The Long View, which is always among the ‘fifty books we wish we had published’ in the shop.

      Simon Jenkins’s book about architecture, subtitled 'From Stonehenge to the Shard', has been published and we shall be buying a copy, hoping he mentions The Sack of Bath, Persephone Book No. 93, which was so crucial to stopping the destruction of Bath but also had a wider influence, for example on the battle for Covent Garden in 1974. It’s always startling to remember, when one sees the crowds there, that if ‘they’ had had their way it would have been demolished. (And yes, thank you, to the very kind reader who wrote in to tell us that Bath has just appointed an Architect in Residence, someone she rates very highly, we shall be getting in touch with him to invite him round to admire the miraculously unwrecked Edgar Buildings.)

   We shall be going to Blitz, trailer here, although in a way would rather have a quieter and less harrowing evening staying at home and simply reading Vere Hodgson's description of it in Few Eggs and No Oranges...

   We hope readers of this letter have been watching the latest A House through Time series, which is fascinating about two small blocks of flats in Marylebone and  Berlin. One of the London episodes features the young poet Timothy Corsellis, and what a poet! The other war poet we have been reading recently is Robert Palmer, whose beautiful poem 'How long O Lord' was read in a Bath Abbey service the night before Remembrance Sunday, which included a performance of Brahms's German Requiem.

     And as for politics: what is there to say? Us Liberals are convalescing from the stress of it all and are alternately despondent, terrified, and opting out ie. ignoring the news. Simon Kuper wrote very gloomily here in 'Lamentations of a Lost Liberal': ‘I just feel shame at the world my generation is bequeathing to our children. Liberal causes have lost. Above all, the biggest unspoken political decision of our time – which predates Trump – is that we won’t take significant action against climate change… The liberal temptation now is to withdraw and enjoy our private pleasures.’ Although, speaking personally, we cannot really agree with his pessimism and are firmly living to fight another day.

   There are two television series to look forward to, well three if you include Rivals by our wonderful Preface writer Jilly Cooper. One is the fourth and alas final series of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend and the other is Our Oceans narrated by Barack Obama, trailer here. But nothing on television will be as good as Giant (about Roald Dahl) which we saw at at the Royal Court but next year is going to transfer to the West End, hurrah.

  Let’s conclude on an escapist note. There is a Caillebotte exhibition in Paris till January 19th and we shall go if we possibly can. 

Nicola Beauman

8 Edgar Buildings

Bath