The light in the lighthouse widely acknowledged to have been inspiration for Virginia Woolf's most famous novel could soon be turned off.
Godrevy lighthouse, which Woolf knew intimately from childhood holidays in Talland House in St Ives and which she used as the setting for her modernist masterpiece, To The Lighthouse, has been threatened with closure by the England and Wales lighthouse authority on the grounds that its services are no longer required.
While the building – handsome, white, octagonal and Grade II listed - is not itself under threat, the news that its light will most likely go out for the final time in 2010, when the measures recommended by the lighthouse authority's review of UK navigational aids comes into effect, will sadden Woolfites everywhere.
It also comes a day after the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain learned that it had lost its two-year battle to prevent the construction of a £3m apartment block on a car park that was once the orchard of Talland House, from which Godrevy lighthouse can be seen, despite letters of objection from fans from around the world.
Sarah Crown is editor of Guardian Unlimited Books
