Direct and vivid in her account of Clarissa Dalloway’s preparations for a party, Virginia Woolf explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman’s life.

Mrs Dalloway, which takes place on one day in June 1923, shows how the First World War continued to affect those who had lived through it, five years after it ended. David Bradshaw explores the novel’s commemoration of the dead and evocations of trauma and mourning.

‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is a play that explores courtship, romance and marriage through a number of relationships. Most famously, that of the irrepressible Beatrice and Benedick as they trade their wits against one another, criticising the notion of marriage, yet slowly falling in love with one another as they do so.