This studio, at 31A Grove End Road, St John’s Wood in North London, might be one’s dream room: ‘Studio, built c1926 by Thomas Tait, an early exponent of Modernism in Britain, in the garden of the family home of the sculptor Sir William Reid Dick. Reid Dick was a personal friend of Tait, and his work is seen at Unilever House and Selfridges by Tait and his partner, Sir John Burnet. Tait’s sculpture is also incorporated into the fabric of the studio and the garden. In 1974 the architects Colin St John Wilson and Mary Jane Long bought the building, restoring and adapting it as a family home. During this time they were working on their major commission, the British Library.’ (And, yes, the reader has no idea if here partner means business or romantic, you can’t be too careful with words.) Notice the Thonet bentwood chair by the piano –  we can’t have had any Thonet on the Post for, well, months – maybe we need some next week.

‘The Rex Cinema, Berkhamsted, is a classic Art Deco cinema designed by David Evelyn Nye and opened in 1938, with a curved concrete canopy and tall vertical windows illuminating a double-height entrance foyer, complete with large Art Deco chandelier and staircase. The cinema closed in 1988, becoming derelict. In the mid-90s a developer planned to demolish it and it looked likely that the Rex would become a residential development. Despite being discussed in the House of Commons it was declined government subsidy. Then, after campaigning by the C20 Society – and supported by actors and personalities including Joan Bakewell, Hugh Grant, Hayley Mills and Ian Richardson – the cinema was spot-listed Grade II by Historic England.The building re-opened to the public in 2004 as a 350-seat single-screen cinema. Its first screening was The Third Man: made during the Rex’s earlier heyday with screenplay by Graham Greene who grew up in Berkhamsted. It now shows films 362 days a year’ (from the C20 Society website here).

Persephone Books has long been a keen member of the C20t Society, which has recently issued a little booklet celebrating forty buildings they have helped to save over forty years. Here are five, starting with  the K8 telephone box (1968) ‘now repurposed as libraries, coffee kiosks and to house defibrillators, again fulfilling an important role in the community.’ More details here. And of course the society also campaigned to save the K2 (1924) and the K6 (1935) boxes..

And the fifth child’s essential? A wooden bike. This is Galt’s 1960s and my goodness how generations of children have loved it.

The fourth absolutely essential toy for a new baby is building blocks, this is the present of choice in our household. These are nineteenth-century but plain modern ones are usually pretty nice.

Who could resist, then or nowadays, this 1940s Noah’s ArK?

My goodness, it’s hard to choose the five best toys ever. Does one take fashion/up-to-dateness into account? Or just choose five favourites? Well, we have gone for an imaginary Persephone window – if we focused the shop window on classic toys, what would be in it. So the second favourite has to be the Sasha doll, a huge part of our lives in the ’70s and now given to a grandchild. (Available on e-bay for the nostalgic.)