We have had rather a fabulous time in Bath recently: it has been a particularly beautiful spring and our new book, Crooked Cross by Sally Carson, PB no. 152, has become a bestseller! First off there was the article in the Observer in February, then Laura Freeman (author of the Preface) wrote a piece telling readers of The Times about it, Country Life said that 'this cautionary, prescient book is un-putdownable', we have received wonderful comments from present-day novelists such as Rachel Joyce, Joanna Quinn and Harriet Evans, and finally Fran talked about it on BBC Radio 4's Today programme with the historian Margaret MacMillan (here after two hours and 45 minutes). Fran also had an online discussion about Crooked Cross with Zoe Grams of the excellent Upstart & Crow in Vancouver. 

Then of course there is the extremely sad coincidence that the novel shows the rise of a tyrant in 1933 Germany and has been published at the same time as the rise of another/several tyrants 90 years later. In addition, the television series Adolescence has focused on disaffected young men ie. young men who feel they have no purpose in life and nothing to fill their days, a purposelessness which was so efficiently and so ruthlessly filled by the Nazis, and the book implicitly asks the question, what should be done? 

And last Thursday we had the first 'rehearsed reading' of the 1935 play of Crooked Cross (with the second about to happen), we were all spellbound and no one more so than Sally Carson's two granddaughters and great-niece who had come over from Canada especially for the launch. It was such a joy to meet them – as it is always a joy to meet the descendants of 'our' authors. As we have said before, there are about thirty of them whom we have met (and to whom we pay royalties if the book is in copyright) and we always dream of having a party to get all of them together. It would be worthy of a short story: the grandchildren of Winifred Watson, Jocelyn Playfair, Isobel English, Rose Allatini and Amber Reeves, for example, chatting about their literary ancestors. (For the curious: since we look after more than 120 authors, when a book is represented by an agent, as is the case with eg Dorothy Whipple or Marghanita Laski, then we do not usually meet the families, sadly.)

So we ordered a 5000 copy reprint a month ago and have just ordered a second of the same amount! But will the novel be read by anyone who has the power to improve/change things for the better? It is not very likely – and so it will become another in the long line of novels that tried to be influential/make people wake up through the medium of a book – but failed because of the listlessness of politicians. 

Not just listlessness but lack of urgency. There was a piece in the FT about ‘activist grandmas’ eg Hilary Farey, a retired GP who bravely took part in the Just Stop Oil protest on Waterloo Bridge in 2023 and was arrested.  But she is not scheduled to appear in court until 2026! How can it be that in a civilised society it takes three years for it to be decided whether or not someone goes to prison for their bravery? And also to decide to take (more) decisive action to combat climate change. I’m afraid the UK is not entirely civilised at the moment.

But then nor is the USA. ‘At around noon on April 14 2025 America ceased to have a law-abiding government’ wrote Edward Luce in the FT after Trump chose to ignore a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling about an illegal deportation. Or indeed Israel. In a letter last week 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews said they could not ‘turn a blind eye or remain silent’ as ‘Israel’s soul is being ripped out’ because of what is happening in Gaza. Two Cheers for Democracy indeed.

Thus, from the first Persephone book, William an Englishman, through A House in the Country to No Surrender and so many other books, and now Crooked Cross, we have tried to show our readers that they read for pleasure, certainly, but they cannot and should not ignore the state of the world they live in: that publishing always has been political and always will be.

And women have always been quietly, and not so quietly, political. This month we honoured Emily Hobhouse, born 165 years ago, who was an eyewitness of British behaviour during the Anglo-Boer war.  ‘She took on the might of the establishment and the empire to expose the suffering of women and children held in British concentration camps’ (the Guardian).

The SPAB (Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings) had a very good issue of its magazine this spring focusing on all aspects of women in conservation. For obvious reasons we have supported the SPAB for years and years.

Simon Schama’s film The Road to Auschwitz will stop you sleeping for a few nights but is essential viewing. (Etty Hillesum, author of PB no.5 An Interrupted Life, is mentioned briefly.)

And of course although most of the television reporter Lindsey Hilsum’s despatches are grim, she herself is marvellous, brave, good-humoured, a totally admirable person: do listen to her on Desert Island Discs here.

A new exhibition is about to open at Kenwood House featuring eighteen portraits by Sargent of ‘dollar princesses’, American heiresses who married into the European aristocracy. Friends of Kenwood House write: 'That they were beautiful and alluring goes without saying but they also possess a candour and self-confidence peculiarly American to which Sargent is alert. The financial successes of their families represented the future, while the British aristocracy remained locked in the past, economically and politically in decline. The exhibition will present these individuals as women of more substance than simply provincial, rich Americans, willing to exchange money for title. It will explore the contribution they made to society and tell some of their noteworthy stories, giving them more agency in the retelling than they have been credited with to date.' And we hope that the Kenwood exhibition will also feature PB no. 71, The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a novel about a 'dollar princess' marrying an English aristocrat and what happens to her (it's not a bed of roses).

And some escapism: we are reading The Elopement, the latest novel by Gill Hornby and simply loving it. There is something about her writing style which is extremely 'authentic' and although the book is not a conventional page-turner, yet it is a magical and terrifically interesting read.

Finally, as a bit more escapism, we are rereading James Lees-Milne’s diaries. It’s gossip, 'higher gossip', but full of fascinating detail about the early days of the National Trust and the realities of the Second World War in London. And so much else. What a marvellously evocative photograph this is (showing him at work in the NT office in 1937).

Nicola Beauman

8 Edgar Buildings, Bath