Virigina Woolf is one of the most iconic writers of the 20th Century committing suicide in 1941 at the early age of 59. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Prunella Scales is probably best known for her portrayal of Basil Fawlty's wife in 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers but that does her an injustice to a carer that has spanned 50 years from her early appearances in Pride and Prejudice and Hobson's Choice. Her first career break came with the early 1960s sitcom, Marriage Lines starring opposite Richard Briers. She has had major roles in BBC Radio 4 sitcoms, most notably After Henry, Smelling of Roses and Ladies of Letters; on television she starred in the London Weekend Television/Channel 4 series Mapp & Lucia based on the bestselling novels by E. F. Benson. She played Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett's A Question of Attribution. In 1973, Scales teamed up with BBC Television actor & comedian Ronnie Barker in the (original) award-winning one-off Meat, which aired as One Man's Meat and was part of a series called Seven of One, also for the BBC. Her film appearances also include The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987) Stiff Upper Lips (1997) and Howard's End (1992). More recently she was seen in a series of Tesco supermarket commercials as a domineering mother, Dottie Turnbull, with Jane Horrocks as her long-suffering daughter.