Happy New Year to all our readers. We begin 2025 with a photograph by Alice Longstaff (1907-1992), a farmer's daughter who took the unusual step of becoming an apprentice in a small studio in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. She set up own her own in 1935 and was well-known in the town where she photographed local people, events, everyday life, and the surrounding landscape for seventy years.

Christmas Tree Viewed through Red Curtains (c1952, Museum of the Home) by Charles Mahoney) makes one think of the first chapter of Greenbanks which opens on Christmas Day in the large, warm, comfortable family house of the same name. The Post will return on 2nd January and this novel, or indeed anything by Dorothy Whipple, would be perfect reading for the days between Christmas and the New Year.

Father Christmas (1973) by Raymond Briggs is a delight for anyone who may be less than enthusiastic about "another bloomin' Christmas". A grumpy Father Christmas wakes from a dream of summer sun on Christmas Eve to face his vast delivery schedule (he is partly based on Briggs' father who was a milkman). Once his work is done, he cheers up, opens his presents, and enjoys his dinner ("lovely grub!").

A Christmas card designed and printed by multi-talented Peggy Angus who, with her Sussex cottage 'Furlongs', is one of the various influential artistic personalities who feature in Long Live Great Bardfield. This article gives a flavour of her talents, friendships, and the impact she made through teaching. 

Lucia is the traditional Swedish celebration on 13th December in which Santa Lucia brings light, in the form of candles, and Lussekatter (saffron buns). Carl Larsson painted Lucia Morning in Sundborn (1908) in his typically delightful way. 

This is the last week of the Post for this year, so we are going to end on a cheerful, seasonal note with work by some of our favourite artists and designers. We begin with a beautiful and now very rare 'Christmas Pudding' plate (1938, V&A) by Eric Ravilious, part of a service designed for Wedgwood. 

A Lab of One's Own (2020), with the subtitle One Woman's Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science is a memoir by Rita R Colwell (b1934), one of the most influential scientists of her generation. The phrase 'a lab of one's own' appeared many decades earlier in The Call (1924) by Edith Ayrton Zangwill whose stepmother was engineer and inventor, Hertha Ayrton (seen here in her lab in 1926) whose battles for recognition informed the writing of the novel.