‘On or about December 1910,’ wrote Virginia Woolf, ‘human character changed.’ This walk with Paul Guest charts selected transformations in such fields as medicine, literature, civil rights and town planning. These led to advances to the way we lived and changed society.

Virginia Woolf herself represents a new, complex conception of fiction, centred on characters’ consciousness. Well before 1910, Bloomsbury was partly developed on three great estates, with marked improvements to housing. Pioneering women made far-reaching contributions to medicine and social reform. The Victorian postal service, inspired by a vision of human improvement, helped to spread mass communication. Bloomsbury even has at least an indirect connection with a momentous revolution.