Lambs Conduit Street - Persephone Books

Persephone Books reprints neglected classics by C20th (mostly women) writers. They are all carefully designed with a clear typeface, a dove-grey jacket, a 'fabric' endpaper and bookmark, and a preface by writers such as Julian Barnes, Eva Ibbotson and Polly Toynbee.

© David Gentleman

The shop is full of beautiful grey books, scented candles, classical music and easy chairs. 

'The Winds of Heaven is a 1955 novel about 'a widow, rising sixty, with no particular gifts or skills, shunted from one to the other of her more or less unwilling daughters on perpetual uneasy visits, with no prospect of her life getting anything but worse’ (Afterword). One daughter is the socially ambitious Miriam living in commuter belt with her barrister husband and children; one is Eva, an aspiring actress in love with a married man; and the third is Anne, married to a rough but kindly Bedfordshire smallholder who is the only one who treats Louise with more than merely dutiful sympathy. The one relation with whom she has any empathy is her grandchild.'

Recommended for a few peaceful hours in genteel surroundings