Tell It to a Stranger: Stories from the 1940s

'One of my favourite Persephone books,' said Charlie Lee-Potter on Radio 4's Open Book, 'is a collection of short stories by Elizabeth Berridge first published in 1947 when she was 28. They are a revelation to me, I was transfixed by the quality of the writing. It seemed to me that they are quite radical stories, they were quite sharp and hard and disruptive as ideas.' 

The collection makes a wonderful duo with Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter Downes, not just because they are set during the same period but also because both writers are witty and perceptive and have an ability to hone in, almost brutally, on aspects of human behaviour that most people, tactfully, ignore: Mollie Panter Downes's wife wishing her husband's leave had not been deferred because she is too weary to say goodbye to him all over again. Elizabeth Berridge's Lady Bountiful who will not admit to herself that she chooses to put her Red Cross duties before the needs of her soldier son.

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'Web', Graham Sutherland's screen-printed rayon crêpe fabric, was a 1947 design for Cresta Silks. It has a period austerity, while the jagged web imagery suits stories in which many of the characters are trapped - by other people's preconceptions or by the rigidity of their mindsets.