Brief Encounter (1946) is a favourite on TPTV and a favourite with us. It could be said that the book in Laura Jesson's basket (above) is the foundation stone of Persephone Books. As Nicola Beauman writes, "A Very Great Profession was conceived when I first saw the film of Brief Encounter on television...In it the heroine...goes into the local town every week to do a bit of shopping, have a cafe lunch, go to the cinema and change her library book...It was the glimpse of her newly-borrowed Kate O'Brien in her shopping basket that made me want to find out about the other novels the doctor's wife had been reading." The rest, as they say, is history.