Never by me. Rarely does a day go by without my reading a few lines of hers. One of my aims in the de-cluttering of books that has been going on is to end up with 'fewer but better' - better in every way; better writing, better looking but most of all I want to be sure I have everything I possibly could of and by and about far fewer. I won`t go to the lengths of the SP and have rooms packed with books by and about just the one, including his study which runs the whole length of this house. But more Woolf is certainly part of the plan and I have a great deal already. All the novels in various editions, all the non-fiction, the letters, the diaries.. and then there are the books about VW though I neither have nor want anything like all of them. She attracted her share of the deranged, misguided and incompetent critics and commentators. But she has also attracted some of the best; she has been fortunate in her biographers, from Quentin Bell to Joan Bennett, Lyndall Gordon to Hermione Lee and Julia Briggs.

I have had A WRITER`S DIARY beside my bed for 40 years and dip into it at random every day. I know it pretty well by heart I should guess. Today I came upon,  'Why is there not a discovery in life ? Something one can lay hands on and say 'This is it.'

I know what she meant. She had a restless, questing intellect, she knew about so many things - literature of course, centuries of it, then history, politics...yet she never found the thing she sought, never said 'This is it.' But then again, perhaps she did.

I slept in the warmth of the afternoon but worked at my little table outside in the cooling evening and at one point, stopped and looked up and around me. The roses are starting. The Paul`s Himalayan Musk and other great ramblers are studding the trees, and clambering over the roof of the wood barn. The swifts were screaming round. A first wave of baby bluetits were just hatched. One came to perch on arm of my chair. I froze as it sat there quite unfrightened, no bigger than my thumb folded over, tiny bright eye looking round. Then the barn owl flew off. Then the bats came out. The air smelled of cut grass. And I thought I could say then, 'This is it.'  Virginia Woolf was acutely sensitive to her surroundings, especially when she and Leonard were in the country and she walked, she had a garden, and a writing shed at the bottom of it. I`d lay money on her having set down her pen and smelled the air of an evening such as this and seen the swallows skimming the water and said once at least,'This is it.'

Talking of VW, you thought I had forgotten about Woolf for Dummies. No. I gave you a winter off, that`s all but come the autumn classes will resume. All welcome. You do not need to re-enroll. We will be starting with MRS DALLOWAY and please also read VIRGINIA WOOLF. AN INNER LIFE by Julia Briggs by the time we start. You have three months which should be more than enough.