There ain't no party like a Penelope Fitzgerald party!

January's trawl through writers' letters continues, and today the aim is to inspire you, in this drear midwinter, to seek out laughter and nonsense and company worth leaving the warm house for. Penelope Fitzgerald writes to her friend Hugh Lee on November 13, 1940:

I hear Oxford is violently gay and in general suggests those bits in comedy films where you see champagne glasses superimposed on merry-go-rounds to suggest dissipation, so when I come up I do hope you will be able to show me some of it.

Dissipation awaits--you just have to bundle up and seek it out!