Charlotte Johnson Wahl has always been a great friend to Persephone Books, buying (and reading) the books and sometimes popping in when she goes to the hospital in Queen’s Square (she was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s thirty years ago). Despite her now-famous children  – details here – she has steadily pursued her own career as a painter. Or rather, not pursued a career but painted because she loved it and it was her life. There is an exhibition of her work at the Mall Galleries this week and then one of Charlotte’s paintings will be in the shop window until the end of the year. This is an early painting, a self portrait painted in 1977 when she was 35. It now hangs at her former college, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.