May is a very relaxed month in the UK with public holidays at the beginning and end, the second one of which is at the beginning of half term; and yet it was Easter so recently. No matter, we are happy to be in holiday mode, even if not among the crowds as per this beautiful Bank Holiday, Hampstead Heath (1930) by Evelyn Grace Ince (1886-1941).

But the writer of this letter did in fact have an actual holiday. It consisted of three nights in Menton

in a hotel room overlooking the sea with the soothing sound of waves beating on the shore. Apart from sitting on the beach there was lunch with a friend in her flat at the 1897 Clos du Peyronnet, the gardens wonderfully planted by the late William Waterfield

whose brother Giles wrote a novel called The Long Afternoon (2001), ’a semi-fictionalised account of their grandparents' years at Menton from 1912 until their forced departure in 1940’; more details here and here.  Then there was a day trip to Italy (Ventimiglia), visits to the the wonderful fruit and vegetable market and the incredible traiteur (delicatessen) for carrots rapeés, roasted fennel and other such delights, all in all a very welcome break from ‘normal’ life. Btw, the Villa Isola Bella in Menton is of course where ‘our’ writer Katherine Mansfield lived for a while in 1920.

Now there is a Katherine Mansfield Fellowship residency for New Zealand writers, details of how to apply here.

We are just about to send our autumn book, Her Son’s Wife by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, to the ‘typesetter’ for a final round of corrections before printing in July. As we are often reminded as we work on a text, it’s extraordinary how many typos there were in novels of the period, almost as though publishers didn’t bother with proofreaders. When we re-set (ie. scan in the original text and correct it before converting the font to Baskerville) it transpires that even the most prestigious of publishers (eg Leonard and Virginia Woolf) didn’t care about proofreading. We do care!  So, dear reader, if you find a typo in one of our books please let us know (tenderly rather than triumphantly) as we always correct if necessary when we reprint. (This does not apply of course to the twenty per cent of our titles which are printed facsimile as the text cannot be changed.)

And what have we been reading and watching? Well, most memorably, Mr Emmanuel (1939) by Louis Golding, both the novel and the film (available here). This is on the same theme, alas, as PB no. 152 Crooked Cross: in 1938 England Mr Emmanuel, who is Jewish, gets to know a little Jewish refugee boy whose mother has stopped writing to him and decides to go to Germany to look for her; here, because he is Jewish, he is imprisoned, interrogated and beaten. Don’t let anyone assert that the British public didn’t know what was happening in Germany in the 1930s, novel readers most certainly did. Now we are trying to read the famous Louis Golding novel, Magnolia Street but finding it very slow and rather dull. This must be part of the Charles Morgan/Hugh Walpole phenomenon: writers who were huge in their time are now unreadable. And yet for Persephone readers Dorothy Whipple and eg. Nevil Shute live on forever. Is it to do with story? Or not being long-winded? Goodness knows. Yet Middlemarch is long-winded but last week was, quite rightly, voted everyone's favourite novel here. (Only three people, Elizabeth Day, Andrew Solomon and David Nicholls –  and of course all three are exceptionally perceptive and brilliant  – chose Howards End. I mean!)

After Mr Emmanuel we watched an incredible 2003 documentary about Nureyev called Living Famously (it's on BBC Two here) and a documentary about children who lived through the Blitz also on BBC Two. Finally, Rivals Series 2: in some ways it’s like an old-fashioned slap-stick farce (cf. the scene in the kitchen when they all avoid each other by hiding in cupboards) but most of all it’s a tribute to the late, great Jilly Cooper with her tremendous sense of fun and admirable lack of pretentiousness. Jilly was the copyright holder for our two Lettice Cooper novels and even her notes thanking for a tiny royalty cheque were a joy. Before paying for Disney read the Guardian review of ‘this unapologetically preposterous adaptation of the ’80s bonkbuster’ because it’s certainly not for everyone. Far more seriously, The Archers continues on the storyline of will or won’t Brian hand over the farm to his son Adam or will he selfishly and annoyingly continue to want to be top dog? For those of us who are indeed handing over to our children he is an examplar of how not to behave. Finally, we watched A Friend of Dorothy (Disney again) with Miriam Margolyes. It’s a (very short) gem.

We listened to our favourite programme on Radio 4, This Cultural Life. Last week John Wilson interviewed Dame Felicity Lott. She was so lively and interesting and unpompous. Then a day later it was announced she had died. This was particularly devastating because she had sounded so, well, alive. 

In the last few days we have made the decision to publish the third book in the Sally Carson trilogy and will do so in April 2027.

The original 1938 jacket is pictured above. A Traveller Came By is set in England from 1933-4 and is on a very important theme, one that we often mention in this Letter: how much notice should an ordinary person take of politics in their country, and of what’s going on in other countries, in other words how involved should the average 1930s Englishman and woman have been in what the Nazis were doing? (And then there is the difficult question: how much notice should we Brits take nowadays of what is happening in Iran or Gaza or Russia or America, details of which don’t have to be spelt out?) Why Sally Carson set The Traveller in England rather than Bavaria like the other two books is interesting but one reason would have been that by 1937 when she was writing a Nazi or two might have already read Crooked Cross and The Prisoner and she may have realised she could not safely go back to Germany (cf. Mr Emmanuel above). Then there is the huge theme of appeasement – or not. Lastly, we are beginning to believe that there is an autobiographical element in the love affair described in the book., but this is speculation at the moment.

Our neighbour Ken Loach has just been to Cannes to receive an award. He will be 90 in June. We plan to re-watch his entire oeuvre over the coming months, either on the BFI site or You Tube  or MUBI. For anyone new to his films just start with Cathy Come Home (1966) and The Old Oak (2023) and then go back and gradually watch all his films. There is a good book about them too by Graham Fuller. Naturally the films should be avoided by the apolitical.

Talking of politics, please read Robert Reich's address to the class of 2026 at Berkeley. How very, very lucky the students were to be addressed by someone so wise and empathetic and kind. 

And finally, we have been doing the Persephone Post because Jane Brocket is on holiday (in Japan). Last week we focused on five marvellous French watercolours by Kate Mears and this week it’s Cedric Morris’s flower paintings and his newly-restored house Benton End. Do people realise that just like this Letter you can sign up for the Post here and it comes free into your inbox every day? It has the delightful characteristic, we think, of being a) short b) not selling anything.

Nicola Beauman

Persephone Books

8 Edgar Buildings

Bath