''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 Brontë sisters, 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