(Dorothy Parker)

THE Bloomsbury Group was a small gathering of modernist artists and intellectuals who challenged Victorian and Edwardian social conventions, sexual taboos and views of the world. Its core members included the writers and critics Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and Clive Bell, and the artists Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant, among others.

Bloomsbury men and women talked and listened in equal terms and valued each other’s intellect and wit. Their core value was that what mattered most was ‘states of mind’.

This group of friends and lovers had an extraordinary and enduring impact on 20th century culture: ‘in a hypocritical society, they have been indecent; in a conservative society, curious; in a gentlemanly society, ruthless and in a fighting society: pacifist’ (Raymond Mortimer).