Why Virginia Woolf's name resonates 85 years after her death

Could Virginia Woolf's suicide have been prevented? Today, 85 years since that fateful day, this and many other questions remain unanswered. On March 28, 1941, my great-aunt Virginia left her home Monk's House at Rodmell, near Lewes, walked across the Sussex Downs to the River Ouse and appears to have placed a large stone in her pocket and entered the fast-flowing waters.

Virginia's body was not found until April 18, nearly three weeks later. The coroner's verdict was "killing herself while the balance of her mind was disturbed... death by drowning". The note she left for her husband, Leonard, ended: "Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V."

As I think about my great-aunt, I still wonder at her enduring popularity, her status as household name. Every London cabbie, every Italian or Japanese tourist has heard of her; even though the majority have never read her books they can instantly recognise her face. That 1902 Beresford image of the young Virginia is haunting (she was 20-years-old) and adorns tea towels in many museum gift shops. What is it about Virginia Woolf: beyond the ground-breaking modernist fiction and the pioneering feminism, the literary societies and conferences - why does everyone know her name?

In her suicide note, written at the age of 59, she is convinced she is "going mad again". Sadly these breakdowns were nothing new. The sudden death of her mother from rheumatic fever in 1895 had provoked Virginia's first breakdown at the age of 13. Her father's death in 1904 triggered her second collapse; she then endured the death of her half-sister Stella in 1897 and her beloved brother Thoby in 1907.

The repeated bereavements took their toll on her mental health. Virginia's third breakdown in 1913, aged 31, occurred less than a year after her marriage to Leonard Woolf. During the course of 1913-15 she made several suicide attempts, including trying to jump from a window and overdoses of sedatives.

As the "madness" took hold, she stopped eating or sleeping and at times she hallucinated - Quentin Bell records that she once heard "the birds singing in Greek and [imagined] that King Edward VII lurked in the azaleas using the foulest possible language".

The hallucinations and the madness which is often mirrored in her novels have contributed to the myth of Virginia as a cold, forbidding figure, without children and somewhat remote. Physically, she couldn't be described as feminine or maternal; photos from the early 20th century show her as tall and angular, often writing and usually with a cigarette. (PIC)

Socially too, she has acquired the reputation of being snobbish and superior (she herself wrote an essay entitled "Am I A Snob?").

But what was she really like? In fact she wasn't snobbish or remote - my father Cecil Woolf (who lived in Leonard's London home for 30 years) recalls a talkative, deeply engaged woman, who was curious about everyday life.

He remembers his aunt as, "Volatile, mercurial, moody... She could be quite sharp - she looked sharp, her face was sharp. When you arrived at their house, she would ask you about your journey and she wanted every detail. 'Okay, you came by train. Tell me about the people in the carriage'."

"Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V."

My father recalls how she would recycle information, exaggerating and fictionalising all the daily minutiae in her novels and in her characters. Reading her letters and diaries, one discovers a more playful side to the tortured genius. Virginia's daily journal and correspondence reveal a sensitive, perceptive young woman who loved a "debauch of gossip" with her friends.

She records romantic, intimate moments with her husband; her 33rd birthday, for example, when Leonard "crept into my bed, with a little parcel, which was a beautiful green purse... I don't know when I have enjoyed a birthday so much..." (January 25, 1915).

She describes a shopping trip after her skirt has split in two: Leonard goes to the library and she to "ramble about the West End, picking up clothes. I am really in rags. It is very amusing... I bought a ten and elevenpenny blue dress".

Despite her recurrent bouts of 'madness' which required total rest and seclusion, Virginia was extremely sociable. This side of Virginia is often overlooked: she adored the social whirl, flirtations with men and women, the stimulation of talk and human interaction. Her letters and diaries refer constantly to her busy social life, teas with poet and publisher T S Eliot, dinners with the political economist Maynard Keynes, London parties and weekends with friends in the country, trips abroad.

Her social milieu is another aspect of Virginia's enduring fascination, especially the Bloomsbury Group immortalised by Dorthy Parker: "They lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles."

Although it was never actually a formal 'group', the members are well-known and their love affairs still excite our interest - so what was the Bloomsbury Group?

These days Bloomsbury, WC1 is a prestigious area in the heart of central London. But when Virginia moved there with her brothers and sister in 1905 it was a seedy part of town, cheap enough for students, artists' models and other dubious types. It was precisely this unconventional aspect which appealed to Virginia and her siblings - shabby Bloomsbury was a world away from the "mummified humbug" of their oppressive Kensington childhood.

And so began the phenomenon, now marked by a series of blue plaques across Bloomsbury, which ignited her emancipated streak.

Starting in Gordon Square, and moving to Fitzroy Square a few years later, then Brunswick Square, Tavistock and finally Mecklenburgh Square, Virginia inhabited these large houses alongside various young men, including Keynes, the artist Duncan Grant, and her future husband, Leonard Woolf, just returned from Colonial Service in Ceylon. They had "parties at all hours of the day or night", often drinking champagne in the back garden. Along with her sister the artist Vanessa Bell, they had love affairs aplenty.

It's not only the scandals and sexual intrigues of the Bloomsbury group, but the themes which run throughout Virginia's novels which keep her relevant to this day. From mental illness (in Jacob's Room), to marriage and families (in To The Lighthouse), feminism and finding one's independence as a writer (in A Room of One's Own), relations between men and women (in The Voyage Out, Night and Day) and so much more.

For a young woman brought up in Victorian times it's hard to imagine where Virginia's inspiration for Orlando came from, with its enlightened exploration of sexuality, identity and gender fluidity, more than a century before the LGBT+ movement and rainbow flags.

No wonder it was adapted for the big screen. There are also those fascinating echoes with Virginia's own sexuality - were she and Vita Sackville-West lovers?

And in our unstable global times, her preoccupation with the war also speaks to us. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Europe was in the turmoil of the first and second world wars. Although Virginia did not write directly about the conflicts, they resonate through her novels, particularly Jacob's Room (1922) and Mrs Dalloway (1925) with their legacy of loss, shell-shock and a generation changed forever.

The recurrent symbols of distant armies, bombs and guns overheard across the Channel in To The Lighthouse (1927) and The Years (1937) also have their origins in the First World War.

Today, 85 years on, Virginia's final words remain the most moving she ever wrote. That simple statement - "I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been" - reveals the profound love between Virginia and Leonard, and remains a testament to an important literary marriage.

And yet the sadness and the madness are painful to witness, as are the unanswered questions. What were these episodes of mental illness which plagued her all her life? Were they bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or chronic depression? Could psychiatric treatment or different drugs have saved her? And did she really mean it - did she want to die? "I shan't recover this time... I can't fight any longer."

Should that suicide note have stayed private? Perhaps. But if so, it would have robbed us of the final chapter of this tortured and beautiful life.