Of all the amazing photographs taken by Roman Vishniac between 1935 and 1938 this is perhaps the most famous and the most haunting - because these children would have lost their lives within a few months or years. ©  International Center of Photography

Laura Knight Three Clowns 1930. No link with yesterday's Post – unless customers in the shop think the three of us, filling mail bag after mail bag, look a little clown-like... © New Walk Museum, Leicester City Museum Service/Bridgeman Art Library

We have this John Minton poster hanging in the office. Nowadays in the UK the surname and postcode is all that is needed: although we still use the 'correct address', something sent to Persephone Books WC1N 3NB would get to us just as quickly.

More houses, but as settings - the dramatisation of Bleak House on UK television is highly recommended. Denis Lawson, who plays John Jarndyce, was also superb as Enid Blyton's second husband.

Still on the theme of London streets – this is a modern photograph of Bedford Row, five minutes from Lamb's Conduit Street (opposite Bea's where we go for cup cakes). It is where the architect hero of Bricks and Mortar has his office. 

Yesterday Bee Wilson wrote an extremely interesting article about Mrs Rundell in the Telegraph's Stella magazine, which unfortunately is not available online (some of her piece will be in the next Biannually). Bee is giving a lecture about Mrs Rundell, and why she was overtaken in the fame stakes by Mrs Beeton, on Tuesday December 1st at the Artworkers Guild in Queen Square, on the left in this photograph (which is captioned 'Engraving after Dayes of the fashionable Queen Square, Bloomsbury, in 1787, when it was still open to the north'). Because the Biannually was delayed by the post strike there are still quite a few tickets left for the lecture, so if you are reading this and are free on that day (6 for 6.30, a glass of wine and cheese straws beforehand and afterwards) do ring the shop to book a ticket, we would love to see you there. 

This rather sad portrait of the poet Iwar von Lucken might just as well have featured a bentwood chair; Otto Dix painted it in 1926 and it is in Berlin, at the Neue Nationalgalerie.

More Thonet, the Post not having had any for a while...

Today, November 18th, is the day DE Stevenson, author of Miss Buncle's Book, was born in Edinburgh in 1892. The photograph, and the reminder of the date, was sent to us by Geraldine from this DE Stevenson website. Miss Buncle's Book is now in our select group of ten bestsellers (Miss Pettigrew, The Making of a Marchioness,  Little Boy Lost etc.)

The edition of The Young Visiters that is in print, and that we have in the  Notting Hill Gate shop, is illustrated by Posy Simmonds. Here is a picture of her rather than an example of her work (we chose her Literary Life as one of our ten books of the decade in the latest Fortnightly Letter) – look at her wonderful shoes, the fireplace, the framed pictures, all perfection and exactly how one of our greatest living artists (and social commentators) should look.

The proposal scene from The Young Visiters, which was written by Daisy Ashford when she was nine and first published in 1919; one of the 'fifty books we wish we had published' to be found at our Notting Hill Gate shop.

Another view of war – this painting of a Women Land's Army Hostel some time during the Second World War is by Evelyn Dunbar (the only woman war artist to be paid by the government) and is from the collection at the amazing Russell-Cotes Art Gallery in Bournemouth. But it can be seen at the (equally amazing) Brighton Museum and Art Gallery until 14 March.

And here is a photograph of Julian Grenfell. On our website we have a photograph of him with his mother and brother – the biography is after all as much about his mother as it is about him – but on the day after the Armistice Day memorial services we must have one of Julian on his own.

Today being November 11th, and we are all wearing poppies, we particularly remember Julian Grenfell, who died on May 26th 1915. This is the endpaper we used for the Persephone Books edition of Nicholas Mosley's biography.

Amy Levy, who wrote Reuben Sachs, was born today in 1861.

Stanley Cursiter (1887-1976) The Fair-isle Jumper © City of Edinburgh Museum and Art Galleries/Bridgeman Art Library 

This 1913 photograph has just gone up on our website. It is of the Chalet des Sapins in Crans Montana, where Katherine Mansfield lived while writing most of the short stories and fragments that we have collected as The Montana Stories. The chalet has been demolished and there is now a hotel on the spot. But Katherine is remembered by a small Montana road named after her; and just outside the hotel dining-room there is her 'lavabo' (basin).

A very odd and rather incredible book by our hero Rex Whistler (available quite cheaply on abe, so it would be an excellent present for a child) which has reversible faces ie you can turn the book upside down and the face is a different person!

The Waagepetersen Family 1830 by the Danish painter Wilhelm Bendz 1804-32 © The Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. Another of those paintings which are a short story in themselves: the man looks like the grandfather rather than the husband; although maybe this is a modern misinterpretation...

So now the clocks have gone back and, sadly, it is dark by five o'clock. We once used this picture on the front of the Persephone Quarterly (as it was then). It is called 'Wet Winter Evening and a Book Lover in Bloomsbury' and is probably the outside of a shop in Sicililan Avenue, the lovely pedestrianised street by Holborn Circus, five minutes from Lamb's Conduit Street.

The best font there is... well, one of the best. More to follow over the next few weeks.