Book excerpt: 'A work of the highest imaginative genius, with powers of perception and description unexplaned in our time' Isaiah Berlin. Virginia Woolf turned to her diary as to an intimate friend, to whom she could freely and spontaneously confide the thoughts and images uppermost in her mind. Whether describing public events or the joys and trials of domestic life, gossiping about her friends or wrestling with the difficulties of her art, gossiping about her friends or wrestling with the difficulties of her art, Virginia Woolf writes with unfailing grace, courage and honesty, and a lively wit which make her one of the most moving and entertaining diarists of this, or any, century. 'The moment I begin to read that light, clear, elegant prose I am seduced. (Virginia Woolf's)nephew Quentin Bell claims that the 30 volumes of Woolf's diary are a masterpiece. Anne Olivier Bell has reduced them to a single volume. I think it is still a masterpiece. ' A S Byatt, EVENING STANDARD