On the Post this week: women we admire/ heroines/ incredible women/women who changed the course of history – we had three vaccine heroes/heroines on the Letter last week so, sticking with this theme, here are five more admirable women. First of all Stacey Abrams, who certainly swung the election in the Democrats' favour by rousing so many people to vote who might not otherwise have done so. Thank the lord is all one can say.

And Nora Heysen painted Theatre Sister in 1944. She had a fascinating life, here are its highlights.

On the day which might, just might, see the beginning of the end of Trumpism, a heart-warming and life-affirming c.1950 portrait by Nora H of her husband. What a wonderful looking man! 'Dr Robert Black  (1917-88) was a world authority on malaria and Professor of Tropical Medicine, University of Sydney from 1963-82.'

Nora Heysen painted Tomatoes on a Chinese Plate in 1939. What a spectacular painting!

Reading about Nora Heysen is very humbling: why on earth hadn't she been firmly on our radar before? Because, presumably, we are insular, narrow-minded and far too Euro-centric. Her work is amazing and, apart from her work, she is fascinating because of her relationship with her painter father (which was complicated) and because of her relationship to feminism (which was straightforward). For anyone as ignorant as we are/were, read this good piece about her by Joanna Mendelssohn here. Nora Heysen spent a few months in London, this is London Breakfast 1935. It's so much our kind of painting: the domestic detail, the atmosphere, the overtones of Piero della Francesca (the blue) and Vermeer (the interior), oh it's fascinating. There are more details about this wonderful painting here (it's in the National Gallery of Australia), for example that it was painted in Duke Street in Kensington and shows Nora Heysen's friend Evie Stokes.

Happy New Year to all readers of the Persephone Post, well as happy as you can make it. Reading is really what is getting us through 'all this' and we hope so much that our 139 books do contribute to our readers' happiness and welfare. This week on the Post: the Australian painter Nora Heysen (1911-2003). This is a 1933 self portrait.

The first Christmas card, 1843. Happy happy Christmas to all readers of the Post. We shall be back on January 4th. Meanwhile, happy happy reading.