The Puffin at Palazzo Tron by Michelle Lovric

If this post had a subtitle, it would be ‘in which the Royal Mail almost sabotages my debut at the Venice Biennale of Art and I’m made to understand that my artwork is “of no intrinsic value”.’

But in the end that’s just a commonplace tale of lost time, expense and heartbreak caused by an apparently uncaring, untrusted institution that also appears averse to the concept of answering the telephone. You can guess what happened and it reflects well only on the valiant Jack, manager of my local London branch and my lovely postie Neal, who honestly tried to swim against the tide and help.

So enough black bile. I’m not going to go all Ms Lovric versus the Post Office on you here.

This is actually a really lovely story.

And a simple one. 

My forthcoming novel, The Puffin, is as usual set in Venice.

And as has also become usual with my books, early on in the novel’s life, it began to exist in a series of poems that explored its ideas and totems: empire, coercion, hats, feathers, Habsburg Yellow, infidelity, poetry, language, animal consciousness, faith and even catastrophic plumbing, which is of course intrinsic to human unhappiness and therefore a special ornament to storytelling.

The Puffin also began to exist in the form of a hand-painted watercolour leporello. 

               

TThe leporello came courtesy of the gracious Venetian artist Matilde Dolcetti, who invites people to come to her beautiful home at the Palazzo Dandolo at San Tomà where we may work at her dining table on whatever we wish, using watercolours and the deliciously textured paper that she provides. I always make a leporello for the literary work-in-progress. It's a really precious use of time, and an exercise that invariably triggers thoughts, images, ideas and words. It even helps me with pace, as something tangible has to happen in each painted panel. It is time with the novel but not at the keyboard. It’s a full and happy refreshment.

The Puffin leporello performed its usual inspirational duties and I didn’t think any more of it – until I saw that the artist Emilia Kabakov was creating a collateral event at the Venice Biennale of Art this year. It was to be called Diario veneziano, a large-scale “total installation” curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and Giulia Abate. The ambition was to transform the noble floor of Palazzo Tron into a collective narrative space: “not an exhibition about Venice, but an exhibition with Venice”. The artist and curators invited participants to contribute physical objects relating to their lives in the city, along with an explanation about why the object carried important memories, resonance and meaning.

I decided to submit the leporello, not so much as the story-model of a Venetian-based novel but as a tribute to Matilde’s grace and generosity in creating the ephemeral community of her dining table in the heart of Venice.

Diario veneziano was not a competition but I was still highly honoured and delighted to have The Puffin's leporello accepted. I’d never dreamt of being more than a regular and excited Biennale attendee (though I avoid the opening week parties). And I loved the idea of this exhibition. The Biennale is the province of international pavilions, big-name artists, publicity stunts and – more than ever this year – the art business. The crowds it draws are just one more thing Venice has to suffer. So I really appreciated the concept of giving the Venetians their own, private Biennale by them, about them and for them.

And it was even nicer to discover that my dear friend, the artist Déirdre Kelly, also has one of her works in Diario veneziano. We have collaborated as fellow Companions in the Guild of St George, the charity devoted to the works and ideas of John Ruskin. But this was the first time we have been in the same exhibition - Déirdre being a proper artist and me being just a writer who loves painting watercolours. And it was of course Déirdre who had taken me along to Matilde’s watercolour sessions in the first place.  

The Puffin, by the way, is a sequel to what's undoubtedly my best-known novel The Book of Human Skin. The Puffin works as a standalone, introducing new characters and new ideas – but readers who enjoyed Human Skin’s garrulous villain will perhaps feel pleasantly uncomfortable to welcome him back as one of a chorus of narrators. This time, not all of them are human.

The book is published on October 8th. Salt Publishing have designed my favourite-ever cover in a process that was joyfully collaborative. I’ll be doing some events to launch The Puffin, including the Venice Noir festival in November and being interviewed by our poetical Dean, Mark Oakley, at Southwark Cathedral on October 20th (Save the date!)

And of course I have other publicity duties ... 

Although I had for a long time despaired of social media, I worked out that Instagram was probably the most palatable for me. A Puffin in Venice Insta page was born. I acquired a life-size replica of a puffin and began to take him on my journeys around Venice. 

I was happy because it meant that I could work with David Winston, whose photographs of Venice tell incredible stories of their own. David has kindly done various puffin shoots with me, like this one at Benevento in the Strada Nuova, where we illustrated scenes from the book using their fabulous array of damasks, feathers, shoes and a very frightening mannequin.

I treated Instagram as I would a novel – not something personal, but part of my work as a writer. I found a voice for the puffin which means he writes himself. He gives historical insights, he comments wryly, he jokes, he points out the ridiculous. He meets local wildlife. He supports local causes like NoGrandiNavi, which opposes the cruise ships that pollute Venice. He is not exactly the same as the puffin of the novel because he has different work to do.  

And, after being very scared of AI, I found a use for it. Writing captions made use of my literary brain but hashtags rotted it. I use AI to generate the hashtags. So also, they are not my fault.

Despite my poor camera skills and cheap old phone, I went out on the streets to seek original material and I have to say that the puffin has brought me some completely unexpected pleasures. 

The first is seeing things from a different angle – in miniature and in detail. Puffin pictures work best that way. I have loved the chance to refocus.

The second is the joy, for a solitary writer, of interacting with living human beings. Whether I’m taking the puffin to be blessed by the local priest along with cats and dogs at Santa Marina, going shopping with him at antique fairs or smuggling him into exhibitions, people are always intrigued by him. Some do double-takes, thinking the resin model is real. Several people have said gloomily, ‘Now we have PUFFINS in Venice too? It must be Global Warming.’ Other ask if they can touch. Everyone wants to know what I am up to.

I was spending a lot of time explaining the puffin and, as you might have noticed, I don’t have a lot of time. So I went to Veneziastampa in Santa Maria Materdomini – where the wonderful Michele is still using antique machinery. I had some puffin cards printed, and that turned out to be another lovely experience. The cards are very popular. I have to keep reprinting them.

In the last two years, I have also worked with a delightful milliner, Tina Giuntini (aka Bea Evie) who makes bespoke hats, as does Alva, the fiery heroine in my book. Tina lent me the antique millinery tools she collects, so I could feel them in my hands as I wrote the scenes in which they figure. Tina has checked the book for millinery faux pas. To illustrate a part of the plot, she even made me a Bergère bonnet with ribbon compartments for musket balls and rolled-up maps.

Tina also created a tiny Napoleon hat for the puffin and is working a turban with a miniature Barbary plume. All for Instagram, but also for joy.

Speaking of joy, now the leporello stands in a vitrine at the Palazzo Tron's Biennale event, surrounded by toys, handmade lace, wedding veils, antique fishing baskets, letters, schoolbooks and so many other things contributed by Venetians. My explanation of Matilde’s magical afternoons stands beside stories of school days, sporting events, family triumphs and tragedies. Naturally the puffin and I went along to see. It is hard to convey how happy this makes me. 

You were perhaps wondering about the melodramatic subtitle to this post … so I will explain. Yes, the Royal Mail lost the original leporello and my frantic attempts to track it down failed. With the deadline for delivering artwork by then three days way, I hastily repainted the leporello from photographs of the original and sent it to the curators by a reliable courier just in time to be included.

In the course of trying to fill out online forms, I discovered that Royal Mail apparently characterises my leporello as ‘of no intrinsic value’. You see, I was lending it, not selling it to the exhibition. The online forms do not consent to be completed so I sent an actual letter to the Royal Mail.

The leporello, I told them, ‘never was and never will be for sale. But it is a piece of original art that was judged interesting enough for the Venice Biennale of Art, so the Royal Mail’s estimation of “no intrinsic value” says more about the Royal Mail than it does about the artwork.’

Interestingly, the Royal Mail actually replied on May 12. ‘I’m happy to advise,’ wrote my correspondent, apparently without irony, ‘ … that your item was delivered on 11/05/2026.’ There was no mention of the fact that this date was nearly seven weeks after it was posted (via a 3 – 5 day tracked service), a Biblical 40 days after the deadline for exhibition submissions and two days after the Biennale actually opened. There was no explanation of the delay.

Who knows if the original leporello was ever really delivered? I have heard nothing from the curators. The Royal Mail has not to date answered my request for proof of delivery. 

Meanwhile, on a happier note, I have just discovered that my Insta puffin has fellow-travellers on the Isle of Man. The Manx Wildlife Trust (MWT) has used the same resin models to attract puffins back to the Calf of Man, a small island without human inhabitants. The marine conservation officer Lara Howe has explained that puffins are sociable and prefer to breed in colonies, so showing other puffins already in place convinces the living birds that the Calf is a good place to settle.

Perhaps I can attract a permanent colony of puffins to Venice this way? We already have beautiful egrets, cormorants, herons and even owls (none of which the tourists, lost in their phones, ever never seem to notice). 

The puffin is sometimes known as the northernmost Bird of Paradise. 

I think they would feel quite at home in what John Ruskin described as 'the Paradise of Cities'.

Michelle Lovric’s website

'Diario veneziano'
9 May — 28 June 2026
Ca' Tron, Sestiere Santa Croce 1957, Venice (two minutes from the San Stae vaporetto stop).

The Delivery of Letters - a novelist's dilemma

by Deborah Swift

Despatch Rider 1648

Every time I write a book  there is nearly always a point in the plot where a letter or message needs to be sent, and I am obliged to calculate how long it will take for the letter to reach its destination. And of course someone in the novel is waiting for the reply, which doubles how much fictional time the reader has to wait to find out the outcome. This calculation nearly always involves the speed of a horse and rider, the distance, the state of the road, and the reliability of the postal service. Nowadays, mail is instant - a few seconds and it's on your screen. In the medieval Chronicle of Croyland, (named for its place of origin, the Benedictine Abbey of Croyland or Crowland, in Lincolnshire, England) we read:

' Richard III followed the practice which had been recently introduced by King Edward in the time of the last war with Scotland, of appointing a single horseman for every twenty miles, by means of whom travelling with the utmost speed and not passing their respective limits, news was able to be carried by letter from hand to hand 200 miles within two days.'

This was the beginning of the despatch rider, at first a temporary measure to take mail of national urgency, and later a method of sending mail along organised routes.Under this new 'stage' system, a fresh horse was available every twenty miles, and so a  hundred miles could be covered in a day.

In Tudor times as the court moved from place to place, so despatch routes would be organized between London and the designated palace. The earliest mention of a Master of the Posts is in the King's Book of Payments where a payment of £100 was authorised for Brian Tuke to take on the role February 1512. Tuke was the secretary of Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey and was asked to look into the King's Posts. He sent a memorandum to Thomas Cromwell which stated that only the London to Dover route was a regular post, and the rest a hotch-potch of disorganisation, with people pulling carthorses from the fields if a message was urgent.

Brian Tuke by Holbein

Because of this shortcoming, the idea of always having a horse in readiness became essential. So the postmaster was born, a man who would have a horse always available for despatches (and of course he could hire these horses out to private persons too.) On major routes now there would be a postmaster appointed in each town, and they were instructed to have the sign of a posthorn hanging on the door, for the couriers to be able to find the source of their next mount.

For this reason, we often still see the image of a posthorn on our mailboxes, stamps, and on taverns or pubs that were former staging posts. Some are still called the Post Horn Inn, the Horn or the Bugle Horn.

By Elizabeth's reign, entrepreneurs had begun to set up rival companies, until a proclamation was made that the only mail that could be sent abroad was to go by the official posts. By 1598 it was possible to send mail to Ireland via two routes - Holyhead and Bristol. However, unofficial postmasters still plied their trade until the reign of Charles I when Thomas Witherings was apponted Postmaster of England. In April 1633 Witherings was sent on a visit to the Calais and Antwerp to regularise the foreign mail service, and he subsequently became so efficient that he gained a virtual monopoly on the routes from the capital to Bristol, Norwich, Plymouth, Edinbugh, Holyhead and Dover, all places linked to foreign trade.

Mail in Early Modern England was notoriously unreliable. Footpads and thieves lurked on all the highways, and the post was often the target. Some post boys had 'arrangements' with local thieves. Added to this, many roads only had a weekly or bi-weekly service. I soon realised it was no good, as a novelist, thinking that the letter your character has sent would go the same day. It might be a week before the letter even began its journey.

The post was then subject to the vagaries of its individual riders, and in the 18th Century John Palmer of Bath described the problem of postboys:

'an idle boy without character, mounted on a worn-out hack, who, so far from being able to defend himself against a robber, was more likely to be in league with one.'

John Palmer, who owned a theatre in Bath, used a coach to take his theatrical scenery from town to town. Finding this quicker than the mail,  he conceived of the idea of doing the same for the post. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, allowed him to make a trial run carrying the post between Bristol and London. Under the 'stage post' system the journey had taken 38 hours. The coach, funded by Palmer, left Bristol at 4 pm on 2nd August 1784 and arrived in London just 16 hours later. The government was impressed, so the mailcoach was born.

Royal Mail Coach , Science Museum London

To increase speed and efficiency, mail coaches in England were made to an approved design. Mail was held in a box at the rear where the only Royal Mail employee, who was armed, was allowed to stand. The guard's seat could not be shared with a passenger. The service ran to a punishing schedule, which meant that aside from quick changes of horses, the coach only stopped for collection and delivery of mail. The toll and turnpike gates had to be open by the time the mail coach passed through, and the gatekeeper was warned to open the gates by the blaring of the posthorn.

Mail coaches were able to travel the roads toll-free, but even by Regency times the frequency of foreign correspondence was limited. Just before the advent of the railways, Horne's Foreign Mail Service left St Martin's le Grand  each Tuesday and Friday night. It travelled all night and arrived in Dover at 8.15 the next morning. This gives some idea of the speed and the state of the roads.

Even after researching postal history, I still find myself calculating anew for each novel what sort of length of time my characters might expect to wait for their mail.

BBC  History of the World - Packet Bag

Images from Wikipedia
Bibliography:
From Track to Highway -- Gibbard Jackson
Masters of the Post; The Authorized History of the Royal Mail -- Duncan Campbell-Smith

My website and books www.deborahswift.com Twitter @swiftstory