It is exactly seventy years since Virginia Woolf's "death day" and I think we should morbidly celebrate that fact. Perhaps we should make more of the final days of great writers, even those who decided to end their own lives. We are too squeamishly polite about death, as if it was somewhere in between saying "pardon" instead of "excuse me" and fornicating with the vicar at the village fete.
And we also seem to assume that each day of a suicide's life must have been bathed in shadow, whereas in fact Woolf was a wry, sociable, practical person. There even are photos of her laughing in a swim suit (which I must admit is a bit disconcerting).
She wrote about walking in London, the smell of a spring day, the joys of polishing silver. And her writing voice is eminently sane and sensible. She seems easily as cheery as - say - Beryl Bainbridge or Kingley Amis, and we don't see their departed selves as being particularly sombre. Her madness, as she called it, was one facet of her character, not her whole identity. Her industrious application to developing her craft strengthened her writing muscle, as she knew it would.
Am I the only person who loathed the N.Kidman portrayal in "The Hours", all grim prosthetic nose and drooping ciggie? I would rather have let Emma Thompson have a go, which is saying something.
