1917: Virginia Woolf arrives at Asheham, on the Sussex Downs, immobilized by nervous exhaustion and creative block.

1930: Feeling jittery about her writing career, Sylvia Townsend Warner spots a modest workman's cottage for sale on the Dorset coast.

1941: Rosamond Lehmann settles in a Berkshire village, seeking a lovers' retreat, a refuge from war, and a means of becoming 'a writer again'.

Harriet Baker describes in Rural Hours (Allen Lane) how three very different writers, more often associated with city living, found solace and inspiration in the English countryside. She was in conversation with Lauren Elkin, author of Art Monsters and Flâneuse and translator of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables.

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