Orlando: a Biography was published in 1928 and was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s affair with Vita  Sackville-West. ‘It presents a woman’s view of history through a subversive mock biography of an Elizabethan nobleman … Virginia Woolf’s extraordinarily funny and profound vision reminds us that not every history has to take a conventional viewpoint.’ (Of course the profundity has been wrecked, for some of us, by the deliciously funny Gloomsbury: when things have been particularly grim in recent months  – it’s a year today since the Referendum – an episode of Gloomsbury has been a great help; we sell the box set in the shop.)