Well, we try to be upbeat in our letters, Instagram posts, etc – but cannot stop thinking about Los Angeles. It is true that this ghastly loss of home and community has been happening in Gaza and Ukraine, and we have thought and agonised about  them for many months, but this does not stop us mourning the losses experienced by thousands of Californians during these few days in mid January. We Persephone girls, one of whom lived in LA for twelve years, have many friends there and are deeply anxious about them. And of course there are about 300 LA Persephone readers on our mailing list. We send our sympathy and thoughts to every single one of you.

The opening to this Letter was going to be, trivially in the context of the above, about two absurdities. One is that we have had no phone line at Persephone for, now, four weeks. If you dial 01225 425050, at first you would have been told there was no such number; then, there was an engaged tone; and now it just rings and rings, seemingly forever, but we can't hear it. This is because British Telecom has decided to switch the entire country over from analogue to digital landlines before being sure the new digital system works. And it doesn’t. So we have no phone line and no sign of ever having one again. Can you imagine, for a mail order business?! And the hours and hours the Persephone girls have spent on the phone (their mobiles) to BT. Now we have given up.

The other absurdity is poor Gaie Delap.

She is/was a Just Stop Oil activist, and goodness how we admire her for being one, and she's in prison because there isn’t a wrist-tag that will fit her and thereby enable her to be electronically tagged at home. Seriously. Apparently she has very thin wrists. What we don’t understand is why eg. Keir Starmer doesn’t just say enough is enough and release her. Obviously it’s better than being in Gaza etc but the inhumanity of it makes the UK seem unimaginably petty and cruel. Read Zoe Williams about it here.

Talking of cruelty, as alas one sometimes has to: Catherine Bennett had a piece about the ghastliness of tourists going to Afghanistan while women there are still covered in black from head to toe and forbidden to speak. Please, please someone, stop tourists going to countries where this kind of cruelty happens. Well, reverting to Gaie Delap, soon that might have to include Britain.

But now for something cheerful. For us Christmas and New Year was made magical by all five series of All Creatures Great and Small! Ages ago we had abandoned it after the first episode. (Partly because of the ads; if you can possibly afford it, pay extra not to have them.) Sam West is of course amazing, but it’s the two women who play Mrs Hall and Helen, Anna Madeley and Rachel Shelton, who make it unmissable. Thanks by the way to the Persephone readers who have written in with other suggestions of things to watch; none of them have yet hit the spot, though we are about to try the newest recommendation, State of Happiness on BBC iplayer.

And something else positive: Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton is the most incredible and, yes, beautiful book you will read all year. It’s about finding a newborn hare and looking after it and the way it grows into adulthood and its companionship as it becomes as much of a companion as a dog or a cat. The book is an instant classic and says so much about kindness and empathy and, yes, love, that it will be impossible to forget.

Talking of kindness and empathy: surprisingly enough, very surprisingly, Boris Johnson’s mother Charlotte Johnson Wahl (1942-2021) was brimming with those two qualities. She was a wonderful person and a great painter. Now, until 29th March, there is an exhibition at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind of the seventy or so paintings from her Maudsley period: the paintings she did while she was being treated there for OCD. (The museum is in Beckenham, Kent, which is actually not so far from Dulwich and could possibly be combined with a visit to the Tirzah Garwood exhibition.)

Who knew that ‘plogging’ is the Swedish word for picking up litter while jogging, combining ‘plocka skrap’ (pick up litter) with ‘jogga’ (jogging)? This detail is of course courtesy of Jane Brocket’s Substack, since she was in Sweden over Christmas and wrote about it most beautifully (and yes we were a little envious). As for the interior design shop on the Persephone Post last week, a trip to Stockholm is now at the top of our fantasy travel list (along with Turin and a return to Tamil Nadu); however, Cambridge is a more realistic fantasy in order to see the four still-life paintings by Jan Davidsz de Heem. They are at the Fitzwilliam.

Now, something really lovely has happened. Persephone Books, and the writer of this Letter as its founder, was given an honour and will be presented with a medal by a member of the royal family in February. It's an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) which up till now has meant Over Bloody Eighty to women of a certain generation but will now have to be re-interpreted. Of course this would not have happened without you, our readers, to whom, as ever, we extend heartfelt thanks. We literally could not have kept Persephone going for 25 years without you: ever since the first hundred people gave us their names and addresses at the Country Living Spring Fair in Islington in 1999 we have relied on, and been elated by, the support of our marvellous readers. And now here we are, 26 years and 151 books later: it’s all due to you. Thank you so so much.

Thinking about the royal family made us reflect on how much we admire the (new) Queen. This led us to a marvellous film called Her Majesty the Queen: Behind Closed Doors. It’s about the work she does for victims of domestic violence. Please watch it.

Finally, for readers in Germany: the translation has arrived, and will be available at the end of the month, of Sian James’s One Afternoon, PB No. 147, re-titled One Afternoon in May. We like the way the German publisher says (thank you google translate): 'Siân James takes us into the rural British idyll, enchants us with the best English humour and skilfully outlines the socio-political climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The book  tells a clever and entertaining story about what it means to be a woman in the 1960s and 1970s, a single mother, the value of female solidarity, how challenging it is to be a role model for your daughters - and about the great task of self-love. A warm-hearted and very witty novel about loss and new beginnings, about past and new loves, from the great Welsh author Siân James.' Hear hear.

Nicola Beauman

8 Edgar Buildings, Bath