In the sixty years since her death, Virginia Woolf's England has vanished. Many English country houses and homes, both large and small – Knole and Sissinghurst, Charleston Farmhouse and Monk's House – have been adopted by societies committed to preserving them for the heritage industry, and they have been redesigned for the enjoyment of visitors, a process of democratisation that has altered their identity for ever. The fabric of English society has also radically changed. We aspire to be a multi-racial, multi-cultural society, for whom the concept of ‘Englishness’ is at best an empty myth, the invention of an imaginary past; at worst an occasion for prejudice and political reaction. It has become a potential embarrassment, almost a dirty word. As Raphael Samuel observed, ‘British history makes “Englishness” problematical and invites us to see it as one among a number of competing ethnicities.’ As for English literature, its teaching is now ‘associated with the missionary position in sexuality, parochialism in high politics and tea-shop gentility in the world of letters.’ This outworn concept of Englishness, tied to lost ideals of continuity and community, evolved partly as a reaction to the speed of change, resisting the process even as it responded to it. Yet the conflict that has accumulated around the various meanings of Englishness had begun well before Woolf's death. Her responses to it were themselves conflicted, but also subtle, amusing and acute.