Before the First World War, tennis parties were mainstays of of polite suburban social lives, as recounted by Vera Brittain who felt stifled by such activities in Buxton. Tennis also features in The Wise Virgins in which the 'idle, waiting virgins of suburban Richstead (Richmond/Hampstead)' (as Lyndall Gordon describes them) 'play tennis, and dance, and go on the river'. This is Tennis at Hertingfordbury (1910, Yale Center for British Art) by Spencer Gore (1878-1914).

Summer garden parties and fêtes take place in several of our books, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success. Dorothy Whipple describes a dismal fête in Random Commentary, whilst the Provincial Lady agrees to host her village fête and, of course, manages to extract full comic potential from the event (whilst also doing the right thing). A jolly version can be seen in Four Scenes at the Friends of Bushey Museum Garden Party, 20 August 2005 by Maureen A Miles (1934-2024, Bushey Museum and Art Gallery). 

On the Post this week, events and activities we hope will happen in June, weather permitting. The cricket season is underway, and with it comes the delightful subject of cricket teas, something which absorbs much of the Major's attention and energy, to the exclusion of his wife and daughters, in The Priory. They are still a feature of village greens and Test Match Special commentary. This is High Tea at the Cricket Match by Anna Todd (b1964, Withington Community Hospital).

Many of the Persephone Books illustrators and endpaper designers studied at the types of local provincial art schools being researched for the Art School Project: Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood at Eastbourne, Lucienne Day at Croydon, Evelyn Dunbar at Rochester, Clare Leighton at Brighton. Several went on later to the Royal College of Art, but the local art schools set them on their artistic and creative paths. This is Thanet School of Arts and Crafts in Margate (1931, Grade II listed, now the Adult Education Centre), where Mary White, whose textile design we have used for Two Cheers for Democracy, was a student. It is such a vast project, that it may yet be a while before John Beck and Matthew Cornford reach the South East.

The next Art School Project exhibition will be held in Leicester from April 2025 at De Montfort University which holds the carefully preserved archives of the technical and art school, once housed in the impressive Hawthorn Building ((1897), now part of DMU). It also continues to promote a sense of pride in the history and value of art education in the city.

This is the Waverley Building (1863-65, Grade II listed), once the home of Nottingham School of Art (where Laura and Harold Knight studied and met), now part of Nottingham Trent University. It is just one of many art schools which have left an important and fascinating architectural legacy in our towns and cities. The Art School Project held an exhibition in 2023 in the Bonington Gallery (1969), which once again asked the question, "What did it mean to have an art school in every town and what can we learn by discovering their fate?". The co-curators, Matthew Cornford and John Beck, leave it to the visitor/viewer to decide how to answer this. 

The first Art School Project exhibition in 2018-19 covered the art schools of North West England and was held at Bluecoat in Liverpool, then Bury and Rochdale. This is Liverpool College of Art (photo by Matthew Cornford) which was once just one of several in the city, and is now part of Liverpool John Moores University. As the Art in Liverpool website wrote, "the idea of ‘art school’, especially... as it took shape during the 1950s and 1960s, was more than a place to study art; attendance came to represent a particular stance toward the world, an attitude most vividly embodied by Liverpool College of Art‘s most famous alumnus John Lennon...[who] made being an art student seem like an essential step on the road to the creative life, where the ordinary became extraordinary".