Events

On Wednesday May 22nd at 3.30 there will be a Tea with Diana Athill. The author of Midsummer Night in the Workhouse, Persephone Book No. 92, will read from one of her short stories and answer questions about her life and work. THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT.

On Wednesday June 5^th Wendy Bray, who in 1953 designed the endpaper for Patience by John Coates, will come to a Lunch to celebrate the launch of the Museums and Galleries Notebooks with her designs which we sell in the shop. She will be in conversation with Rachel Cooke, who in September will publish Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties. One of these is Patience Gray, author of Plats du Jour, but of course Wendy Bray, who has been an extraordinary woman for the last sixty years, was interviewed for the book.

The third event this summer will be a showing of the new film of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding starring Felicity Jones and Elizabeth McGovern. This will be at the BFI in Stephen St on Wednesday June 12th: a drink and a sandwich lunch will be served at 1 pm and the film will be shown at 2. It is hoped that at 3.30 the film’s director Donald Rice, screenwriter Mary Henely Magill and one of the stars will join us for questions and discussion. THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT.

Maurice Wren, the Chief Executive of the Refugee Council (which is the recipient of the royalties for Persephone Book No. 102, Elisabeth de Waal’s The Exiles Return) will speak at a Lunch on Thursday June 20^th about the work of the Council and about The Exiles Return.

On Saturday July 27th there will be a Persephone outing to the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne where we shall view the exhibition of Lyons Lithographs; have lunch at 12.30; go to a 2pm lecture by Neville Lyons; and repair to the beach for ice cream.

By kind permission of the present owners, at 4 on Thursday September 12th there will be a Tea at Roppelegh’s, the house Mollie Panter-Downes lived in near Haslemere.This celebrates the renovation of the writing-hut where she wrote all the stories in Good Evening, Mrs Craven and Minnie’s Room, Persephone Books Nos 8 and 34. An actor will read one of the stories for us.

A date for the diary: to mark the Persephone publication of The Squire by Edith Bagnold, the Ninth Persephone Lecture will be given by the noted biographer Anne Sebba on Thursday November 28th at the October Gallery. Her lecture will be called Enid Bagnold: Writer and Mother.

Please ring the shop to book for an event; each one costs £20, but July 27th is £30 to cover the cost of the lecture ticket.

Two other events at which Persephone Books will appear: afternoon tea at The Bookshop, Kibworth on Saturday May 18th and a talk at West Meon in Hampshire on Saturday July 13th.

Book Groups

The Reading Group in Lamb's Conduit Street is from 6.30-8 on the first Wednesday of each month; bread and cheese and madeira are served and the cost is £10. On Wednesday May 8th we shall discuss High Wages by Dorothy Whipple, Persephone Book No. 85 and on Wednesday  June 5th To Bed with Grand Music by Marghanita Laski, Persephone Book No. 86. 

The Teatime Reading Group at Lamb's Conduit Street is on the second Thursday of the month from 3.30-5; tea and cake is served and the cost is £10; it is reading through the entire list of Persephone books except the ten Classics. On Thursday May 9th we shall discuss Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd, Persephone Book No. 46. On Thursday June 13th we shall discuss The New House by Lettice Cooper, Persephone Book No. 47.

Find out more about past Persephone Events.

The Persephone Forum: the book for April is Lettice Delmer.