‘You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it … Please forgive me for writing such a miserable letter.

V.’

I just miss you

[‘I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia.’  So begins a letter from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, written in Milan and dated 21 January 1926. Sackville-West was married and had two sons. Yet throughout her life she was more attracted to women than men. Of her many love affairs, the one with Woolf is perhaps the most haunting.  The relationship would inspire Woolf’s novel Orlando, described as ‘the longest and most charming love letter in literature’.]