So all this week, at 54 Shepherd Market London W1, Sim Fine Art has an excellent exhibition based on the 1940s series called Britain in Pictures. We sometimes have this in the shop window, well, we only have half a dozen not the whole collection, but even these are extraordinary. Though look at the blue one in the middle of the picture. Hmm.  

So a couple of months ago High Street was reprinted at a very affordable price and we stock it in the shop. What is extraordinary is how things have changed in 85 years – we would never, ever put a butcher's shop on the front of a book, even if it's the rather more aesthetic game. And sadly many of the shops Ravilious painted have disappeared. However: if Tirzah Garwood could have had food delivered instead of spending hours and hours going shopping, she would have added an extra couple of hours to her day in which to paint. There's a thought.

The recent exhibition of Ravilious's work at Winchester was called Extraordinary Everyday. This phrase applies of course to any Persephone book and in particular to Ravilious's wife Tirzah Garwood, whose autobiography Long Live Great Bardfield we publish. There is an echo too of A Very Great Profession, the Virginia Woolf phrase purloined for PB No. 78 about inter-war women novelists, ie. the greatest profession is that of women who stay at home looking after children and running the house (a rather left-field quote for Virginia Woolf some might think). And 'extraordinary everyday' would be a key pillar of the book we are longing to write, Domestic Feminism. This is a chemist shop from High Street. Well, it's how chemists used to look.

Eric Ravilious was born in Churchfield Road in 1903. His father owned several shops, including the one under the white awning on the extreme left, but when his drapers shop failed, they moved to Eastbourne, where Eric grew up. There were several shops over the years bearing the Ravilious name, including one which was still trading in the early 1980s, on the corner of Church Road and Acton High Street .

Coach Builder 1938 by Eric Ravilious for High Street.

In the current Biannually we have reproduced this wood engraving by Eric Ravilious. He did this for a bookshop catalogue. So this week on the Post: Ravilious and shops.

And of course comfortable sofas were thought rather decadent. It is significant that Nero has the sofa and Jane is perched on a rather stiff looking armchair. This is the endpaper for The Carlyles at Home.