Etty Hillesum in her room in Amsterdam.

The Kitchen Window by Leo Whelan (1892-1956). This could be in the basement of yesterday's house in Chelsea but somehow we know instinctively, perhaps because of the huge piece of silver, and the height of the window, that it's in an Irish country house.

It's very hot in the UK at the moment and, after last week's protest posters, we need some soothing interiors which can for a moment convey the illusion that life consists of lying on a sofa reading an old Penguin, the Bestlite angled (rather peculiarly actually), the doors open to a wrought-iron balcony overlooking a bridge over the Thames (so perhaps it's Chelsea – yes, a kind Persephone reader in Chicago did some nifty googling and has written to say that this is Cheyne Walk, specifically number 63). It's Interior (1958) by Adrian Daintrey (1902-88). 

This week's posters have also been in response to an appalling picture published last Sunday – a meeting between two of the most powerful dictators of the twentieth century. There is something about the expressions on their faces which is horrifying. Quite apart from the gist of the news item (relevant of course to Dimanche and other Stories). We try, on the Persephone Post, to be an oasis of feminine, feminist and domestic values; but unfortunately the machinations of people like Franco and Hitler cannot always be ignored. And certainly not forgotten.

This is France in the spring of 1968. It means - be young and shut up.

Kurt Tucholsky 1929. No comment necessary.

And David Gentleman in 2004.

Three new books on the Dreyfus Affair are the impetus for a Persephone Post week of polemical posters (nor could we resist the alliteration). Zola wrote his famous open letter on 13 January 1898.

Pearl Buck in 1938 after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature for her 1931 novel about Chinese life The Good Earth. She is, of course, the subject of Hilary Spurling's brilliant new biography Burying the Bones.

Ai WeiWei is the superstar of Chinese contemporary art: this is Grapes and he has been commissioned to create an installation for Tate Modern's turbine hall this autumn.

This is the formiddable Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) who went to the Forbidden City in 1851 as a concubine from Manchu and who eventually became the defacto ruler, some would say despotic ruler, of the Qing Dynasty (1861-1908).

A thousand years after Huai Su wrote his book, when this desk, chair and ink pot were made, women were still excluded from learning calligraphy. Victoria and Albert Museum collection.

How best to start a week of posts on China (where Lydia from Persephone Books has just been for two weeks)? This is an extract from Huai Su's autobiography: he was a Buddhist monk and the greatest cursive calligrapher of the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

If only. It's a shame small businesses like ours can't get better rates and have to charge so much (£4 surface mail, £6 airmail per book) but don't forget The Book Depository.

Nowadays the slogan would be: please give us your postcode. Apparently a book would arrive even if it only had the recipient's name and postcode on the envelope – although we never risk this. The last of the special offer damaged Classics are going out today, nearly 500 of them. One of the things we have been especially pleased about is that people have been encouraged to read something they might otherwise not have done, this is especially true of the amazing The World that was Ours (especially topical this week. Who would have thought? etc).

A mid 1960s poster featuring the iconic Courreges boots, which are so cleverly contrasted with the white stripes on the zebra crossing and with the children's white socks.

There were evidently lots of versions of this bracing slogan, we have one hanging in the shop (an Imperial War Museum reproduction) and put another on the Post a few months ago. This is Abram Games 1942. Whether we should have been fighting to tear down nineteenth-century terraced housing and replace it with modernist blocks is another question...

Anyone who has ever been into the Persephone Bookshop at Lamb's Conduit Street cannot fail to notice, and will have realised from these posts, that we are obsessed with posters. This week we celebrate a new book called Modern British Posters by Paul Rennie. When people ask where they too can buy posters, he is one of the people we recommend along with Leslie Sherlock and places like Christie's. Here is The Rye Marshes by Paul Nash 1932.

Peonies in a Chinese Vase by George Leslie Hunter c. 1930 in the Fleming Collection. This picture is rather Mrs Dalloway-ish, and of course June is when it is set. Time for a reread...

Today's flowers are our tribute to the people who were killed in Cumbria: a domestic tragedy, something ragingly out of the ordinary in a perfectly ordinary English village. As the two of us who were in yesterday were going for coffee, enjoying the sunshine, beginning to print out the 250 (and rising) internet orders from our special offer – a taxi driver, of the kind we have all trusted and relied on all our lives, was changing hundreds of lives for ever. It's rare for the Persephone Post to mention 'the news', we try to provide a soothing respite from the demands of modern life. But today in the UK things feel a little bit different. Floral Still Life is by the American painter Severin Roesen 1815-72 © Babcock Galleries New York.

Brief posts this week as the Forum has gone live, and the special offer means order are pouring in, and Lydia is in China, on holiday (she'll be doing a Chinese week when she's back) and Miki has exams. So calm flower pictures are called for. This is by the extraordinary Christopher Wood, painted not long before his death in 1930. It's called Anemones in a Cornish Window and is at Leeds City Art Gallery.

June 1st - the month for roses. This is Albertine.