Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived in Monk’s House, a sixteenth-century cottage a few miles from Lewes, East Sussex. Even in this tranquil spot they couldn’t escape the Battle of Britain, then reaching its height. The huge air battle of 15 September – a few days after this letter was written to the author Gladys Easdale - is generally considered to be the turning point of the battle. Towns and villages in Sussex suffered considerably from bombing from the air, especially in 1940 and 1944. Hundreds of people were killed, thousands were injured, and many lost their homes. Buses in Kent, where Gladys Easdale lived, were frequently strafed by enemy aircraft. Some scholars consider Virginia Woolf to have been a pacifist although she herself rejected that label.