"Invited to dine with Leonard and Virginia Woolf at their Sussex home Dame Ethel bicycled the twenty miles from the village where she lived to Rodmell, dressed in rough tweeds.

"About two miles from her destination she decided that perhaps she was not suitably dressed for a dinner party. She thought that possibly corsets were required to smarten up her figure.

"Accordingly, she went into a village shop and asked for some corsets. There were none. Distressed, she looked round the shop and her eye lighted on a bird cage, which she purchased.

"About twenty minutes later, Virginia went into her garden to discover Dame Ethel in a state of undress in the shrubbery struggling with the bird cage, which she was wrenching into the shape of corsets and forcing under her tweeds."