"We dedicate this issue to the thought leaders, progressives, writers, philosophers and creators; to each and every single one of us with an open mind."
Within the final of the three, long stream-of-consciousness chapters that makes up Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, she writes: “For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of – to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures”.
A mind free for ideas, could this not be our greatest salvation? Agency and the space to contemplate and concoct. It is ideas – original or repurposed – that have continued to transform the world and our presence in it. Ideas ignite, distract, disrupt and sometimes, if we are fortunate, focus us.
Woolf’s non-linear notions have seen her remembered as a monumental modernist and reformist, and this is why it felt right to travel to the home she loved most – Monk House in East Sussex – to create our cover story for this issue. It was in the small wooden lodge at the bottom of the garden, with views of the South Downs that many of Woolf’s novels took shape; including Orlando, and her very final novel, Between the Acts, published posthumously. One can imagine her here, saturated in the beauty and blooms of her gardens; still to this day a living reflection of her internal landscape.
We dedicate this issue to the thought leaders, progressives, writers, philosophers and creators; to each and every single one of us with an open mind.
Ideas are our power. They sustain us.
Let’s build them the space.
Experience the Ideas issue in its entirety this May, available on newsstands from Thursday 16 May 2024, and through our online shop. Find a stockist near you.
