Infuriating though they may be to put up, deckchairs are a fixture of beaches,  parks, and gardens. Members of the Bloomsbury Group often assembled on deckchairs at their various houses including Charleston and Ham Spray House. This photograph (c1926-27) was taken by Frances Partridge at the latter and shows Carrington, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Ralph Partridge, and Lytton Strachey who was frequently photographed sitting in a deckchair with his long body folded to the same angles.

As readers of the Persephone Letter know some of us have just finished watching all three series of the 2008 (onwards) Lark Rise to Candleford and are now bereft. But two suggestions in emails yesterday from readers of the Post: 'I agree Heimat is one of the best ever. I still have several episodes recorded off BBC2 on video. It is still available in German on the Internet Archive, an amazing source of old programmes.' Also: 'I write to say I hope you will include the Tenko set. It was a wonderful weekly dose of, for the most part, women’s courage and patience in such daunting circumstances.' Yes, we would have liked to include Tenko. And A French Village (much loved by 'our' author Judith Viorst, although we found it far too harrowing to watch). The other one we would have liked to include is Foyle's War. We are off for a rewatch.

The House of Eliott was an early 1990s series about two sisters running a dressmaking business in the 1920s. The stars were Stella Gonet and Louise Lombard and it was/is superb.

Anne with an E (based on Anne of Green Gables, which by the way is very much worth a re-read) has a special place in our heart, mostly because it's excellent but also because Gilbert the office dog is named after one of the characters, Gilbert Blythe. The photograph shows Amybeth McNulty who played Anne and Geraldine James as Marilla; she was of course also in The Jewel in the Crown.

Heimat would have to be in a top five of box sets – but unfortunately it is literally only available as a (quite expensive) box set and not apparently for download. But for those who haven't seen it, do try and watch this great epic about life in Germany during the twentieth century, it is like a novel (think War and Peace, think Middlemarch) but on film. More details here.

The Post this week is about box sets (as they used to be called) since for many of us part of the joy of August,  a holiday month in spirit if not in fact, is watching something marvellous. So we start with what we feel is one of the great series - The Jewel in the Crown and the actress who plays Daphne Manners, Susan Wooldridge. She is also a star for Persephone Books since she reads our audiobook of Someone at a Distance.

Now that montages of images can be created on a screen, scissors and glue may not always be used when making collages, although the principle of bringing together disparate elements with surprising juxtapositions remains. This is Boardroom (2019), which has photos of women superimposed on a traditional all-male boardroom. It is by the contemporary Canadian artist Sara Cwynar (b.1985) who sources material from eBay and second-hand stores to create "visual assemblages" and then produces photographic prints of her work.