Letter

It's quite hard to adjust to London life after a week's holiday in Cornwall: my niece's wedding on the headland overlooking the Godrevy Lighthouse (as in To the Lighthouse) was followed by a heavenly few days in The Landmark Trust's Frenchman's Creek (picture below). This small granite cottage, typical of hundreds in Cornwall, was derelict until the Trust rescued it in the early 1980s and restored it; as always with Trust properties they took great care to respect its origins as a labourer's cottage. Thus, for example, cars are left a quarter of a mile away (although in good weather they can be brought further along the track) and luggage/shopping put in a wheelbarrow, and there are no table and chairs outside, just stripy deck chairs and, for meals, a small round C18th 'occasional' table and stools that we carried outside and covered with a linen tea-cloth.

Doing this every day made one think about why the original occupants would never have eaten outside. They simply would not have had time: their days were spent in fishing, working in the fields or looking after the house; everyone went to bed when it got dark and on Sundays they walked to church – leisure as we know it did not exist. To remind one of this kind of domestic detail the Trust provides no radio, television or dishwasher, preferring candlesticks, earthenware jugs and an excellent library about Cornwall and the Helford River. (The latter naturally included Daphne du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek, a glorious holiday read which, however, led to a good deal of harrumphing from me about clichés and bad writing compared with 'our' authors.)

The walk from Frenchman's Creek along to Helford must be one of the most beautiful in the world, a sharp contrast to my daily walk from Euston station to Lamb's Conduit Street. Nevertheless, Bloomsbury is looking glorious. The petunias outside our door (purple this year) are recovering from the heatwave and the deli next to us has nearly completed its glamorous facelift/expansion. Inside the shop we continue as usual, although this week we are getting used to the tiny adjustments in our routine that have followed Emily's success in making the secure ordering on the website even more secure than it was before. After many conversations between Emily and lovely Chris at 'Cart32' everything is running smoothly. The next big change will be in August when the cost of sending letters and parcels will be determined by size not weight. This will be a huge adjustment for us, and we are still unsure about the financial implications. Certainly we know that the quarterly will cost more to send and all our efforts to keep it under 60g in weight will be irrelevant in future; nevertheless we are not making any big changes to the quarterly until 2007.

Meanwhile, in the States Isobel English's Every Eye has just been published to amazing reviews in the New York Sun and the Wall Street Journal. Merle Rubin wrote in the latter that 'beyond its literary merits, which are considerable, Every Eye provides a wonderful opportunity for American readers to become acquainted with the entrancing voice of a truly original writer.'

Here we have been entranced by the first episode of Jack Rosenthal's Last Act, the first episode of which was broadcast on Monday 10th July; the remaining four episodes go out for the next four Mondays. The series is based on Jack Rosenthal's posthumous autobiography and has been written by his daughter Amy (ex Persephone Books, we are proud to say) and stars Maureen Lipman, a loyal fan of Persephone, and of course the person who brought Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day to Radio 4.

In The Sunday Times AA Gill praised a BBC4 Clarissa Dickson Wright programme about Hannah Glasse - The First Domestic Goddess, concluding: "I know it's not really my business, but this really should have been the first in a series. British food writing has been done mostly by women. In other countries, it's all been male chefs, but here we started with Eleanor Fettiplace, then got Glasse, Eliza Acton, Mrs Beeton, Dorothy Hartley (my favourite), Meg Dodds, Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Claudia Roden, Delia and Nigella. It would be a jolly good series.' Well, yes, it would, but not if it ignored Florence White! But who is Meg Dodds? A free copy of Good Things in England to whoever finds out for us.

Nicola Beauman
Lambs Conduit Street
15 July 2006