Daffodils! What is there to say about their gloriousness? Except that they SO lift the spirits. Of course we have a jug of them in the shop window. This is by William Logsdail (1859-1944) and was painted in c.1935, towards the end of an extremely successful and prolific painting career.

What can one say about the glory of snowdrops? Here they are at the Botanic Garden in Cambridge, which in fact has a delightful Snowdrop Trail.

Sometimes people ask us not to mention politics eg our approving nod to John Major last week. But, Persephone readers: PUBLISHING IS POLITICAL. Even Dorothy Whipple is political. She may not write about governments or power structures or even local government (as Lettice Cooper does in National Provincial) but she writes about values, values of decency and kindness and empathy and good humour and tolerance and understanding. And all these are political values. Or should be. That's why Brexit broke our hearts. We felt that people who voted for it were rejecting those kind of Whipple-esque values. Call it absurd, call us skewed in the wrong direction, but there we are, that's how it is for us at Persephone Books. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that we are quite low just at the moment what with The Government and the Tories generally, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Food Banks, oh it's endless. Of course in a way it's good that we aren't isolated in a little bubble here in Bath. But actually we wish we were in some ways, everything presses on us all too much. So this week on the Post: let's send people flowers, or give a bunch of daffodils if that is too expensive to contemplate. We sent a friend  this from Sarah Raven (alas now out of stock but there's always next year) and my goodness they have provided weeks of joy – they look beautiful in their sweet basket and they smell amazing.

And lastly another glorious portrait of Queen Elizabeth 1st - by Nicholas Hilliard, more details here. And of course The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics at the Holburne runs until May 8th.

Mary Queen of Scots by an unknown artist, again at the NPG and for the moment at the Holburne. 'This portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots has recently been rediscovered as an image painted within her lifetime or very shortly after her death. The painting had long been considered to date from the eighteenth century, but recent tree ring analysis (known as dendrochronology) has established that the panel was felled in the sixteenth century. The work can now be dated to 1560-92. Recent conservation work has also revealed an original oval background with a marbling effect, which had previously been overpainted with dark brown paint' (here).

And this is Katharine Parr (1512-48, Henry VIII's final queen because she outlived him. But alas she remarried and died in childbirth.)

This portrait of Lady Jane Grey, queen for only nine days before being deposed by Edward VI's half sister Mary, is by an unidentified artist and was painted some years after her execution for high treason in 1554. Words fail one really.