This week on the Post, making beds and adding layers of bedclothes for winter warmth, inspired by reading one of Dorothy Whipple's superb short stories, 'Susan', in which an eiderdown, 'magnificent and highly floral...like a coil of monstrous satin sausages' takes on huge significance. Eiderdowns have all but disappeared since we converted in the 1970s to 'continental quilts', as duvets were known when first introduced by Terence Conran in 1964. The British proved reluctant to give up sheets and blankets; The Eiderdown (1920s, Manchester Art Gallery) by Sydney Carline (1881-1929) emphasises old-fashioned feather-filled comfort and weight.