Ann Fleming once remarked that she was so depressed that 'last night I would have put my head in the gas oven, if I wasn't too frightened of the cook to go into the kitchen.' The uneasy balance of power between domestic servants and their masters and mistresses, especially mistresses, is the theme of Alison Light's study of the home life of Virginia Woolf, whose complicated relationship with her own cook, Nellie Boxall, involved a degree of intimidation on both sides. The sight of Virginia and Leonard pacing the squares of Bloomsbury, well out of earshot, anxiously discussing what to do about Nellie is one of many moments when Light lets us see them, as the servants did, from unexpected and sometimes undignified angles.

LRB 16 August 2007 | PDF Download