This Letter is being written in the afterglow of Persephone Christmas drinks last night. There were a dozen of us, including Fran (who has taken over as managing director), Jess (who does three days a week), Letty (who has been doing two days a week since September and is now going travelling before starting her real life), Judy, Joanna, Olivia, Jessica and so on. (And of course everyone steps in when it’s all hands on deck, as it has been for the last three weeks.) And not forgetting Malika who cleans the shop once a fortnight, the various postmen who come faithfully to collect the mail bags every afternoon, Suez who collect the rubbish, BANES who are our landlord, oh the list could be five or ten times as long since something like Persephone Books is dependent on so many people's kindness and hard work. Meanwhile, yours truly only goes in two mornings a week but, the fact is, she is not twiddling her thumbs at home. All the same, a little bit of leisure has opened up and, for example, a jam saucepan has been purchased off e-Bay (a mere £30 new, here) and everyone is going to receive homemade chutney for Christmas (in small Kilner jars which are also the perfect size for a salad lunch). For the first time in many years, since Persephone began indeed, January will be marmalade month in our household, recipe naturally out of a Persephone cookbook (in fact out of one of the cookbooks in the Box Set here).

Apart from being busy in the shop, we have been preoccupied with the news from Syria. What with Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, and so many other horrors that one’s brain can’t really process, it’s impossible to know whether to ignore it all or to be in a permanent state of horror and grief. This does no good to anyone. On the other hand it’s important not to live in a selfish bubble…  Nevertheless, normal life manages to go on. Last week we went to London for the day, to do research at the London Archives (our April author was published by Hodder and some of their records - the things that survived the Blitz - are held there) and here we saw an excellent exhibition called Lost Victorian City. ‘It aims to shine a light on some of the people, places and views of a now lost Victorian city: a community in Limehouse displaced through C20th redevelopment, views of the capital captured by artists at the time and now long since gone, the engineering feat that was the Crystal Palace, as well as aspects of Victorian street life and leisure and glimpses of now-demolished buildings captured by Victorians anxious about the rapid rate of change.’ And my goodness it does shine a light. (Anyone can go and see it, you just have to sign in it at the desk on the ground floor.)  This is Aldgate High Street in 1879.

Also in London: a highlight of this month was Charlie Lee-Potters’s PhD degree show at the Royal College of Art. It was on the Persephone Post the week of December 2nd here, and this gives you some idea of its brilliance.

We are hoping to have the entire installation on display in the upstairs room in the shop in May or June.

Otherwise, we watched a good programme about Alan Bennett here, and a whole evening was dedicated to National Treasure No. 2, Judi Dench. Talking of national treasures, there has been no Call the Midwife this autumn so perhaps the team who make it have been working on Miss Buncle's Book: they bought the rights a while ago but alas nothing has happened – wouldn’t she be marvellous on television? We are always asking friends for recommendations for things to watch (perhaps behaving a bit like Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View who is always asking how the pudding is made, a Forsterian way of conveying that she can be frightfully irritating, also rather absurd, as she actually never does any cooking herself) but people rarely have anything to suggest. This is in part because we are too squeamish to enjoy crime or horror. Rivals, by National Treasure No. 3 and our preface writer (Jilly Cooper), was fine. Diplomat ditto. Emily in Paris is not even quite good. And the final series of My Brilliant Friend dragged rather. Suggestions please. Oh we did watch Blitz, which was good but not a patch on Doreen, our novel, about a girl whose East End mother sends her out of London during the Blitz to a middle-class family who would very much like to keep her.

We were very proud that our friend Max Porter, husband of the more famous Jess who runs the Persephone bookshop, was asked to go to Stockholm to support Han Kang when she received the Nobel Prize. Nevertheless we could not deny that we felt a reread of Meg Wolitzer's The Wife coming on, or maybe a rewatch of the film: it’s not exactly a parody of the Nobel but does question the whole prize culture. And is funny.

We are also proud that the Bookseller has announced the publication of our April book to the world. It is Crooked Cross (1934) by Sally Carson. 'Francesca Beauman, editorial director at Persephone Books, said: "Crooked Cross is everything a Persephone book seeks to be: beautifully written, unputdownable, thought-provoking. To have the opportunity to rescue this literary masterpiece from being entirely lost is an immense privilege. As the lessons history has taught us seem worryingly close to being forgotten, now feels like the right time to share it with the world."'

For a really good laugh do read our preface writer Henry Mance's piece about Maurice Saatchi in the FT (you can read one article free a month). Something else funny: The Economist had an article about the prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. This year’s pick is The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire. Past winners include Reusing Old Graves: A Report on Popular British Attitudes, Strip and Knit with Style, The Large Sieve and Its Applications and Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers. I kid you not.

Here is a beautiful Eric Ravilious plate that was on the Persephone Post this week.

Merry, Merry Christmas to all our readers and a Happy New Year.

Nicola Beauman

8 Edgar Buildings