A Room of One's Own

''But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction - what has that got to do with a room of one''s own?''

A Room of One''s Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928 and became a landmark work of feminist thought.

Covering everything from why a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write, to authors such as Jane Austen, Aphra Behn and the Bront-isters, and the tragic story of Shakespeare''s fictional sister Judith, it remains a passionate assertion for female creativity and independence in a world dominated by men.

''Fierce, energetic, humorous'' Hermione Lee