Sometimes I work out of the London Library. It is just off Jermyn Street, which is a properly British part of town. It is a road lined with ‘gentlemen’s outfitters’. Shops that sell suits and walking sticks, hats and old bloke shoes, colognes and handkerchiefs. It is a little bit like stepping back in time, a process that is usually completed as I step through the doors of the library only to find old guys napping in leather armchairs and a general sense of a bygone era that you don’t find in too many places these days.

Which is a roundabout way of telling you that once I start climbing the stairs to the reading room, this picture frequently stops me in my tracks. 'Here is a woman who looks like she might have an opinion or two about virginity loss',  I think to myself as I climb.

As it happens, it turns out that she probably did. Her name is Dame Rebecca West. She was a trustee of this library between 1967 and 1983 and upon further investigation, I discovered that she was an accomplished author and journalist, a woman who covered the Nuremberg trials for the New Yorker and was once referred to as ‘the worlds best reporter’ by President Truman. She was also a traveller, continuing her overseas adventures well into her seventies and eighties.

Co-incidentally, I also discovered that she is the author of one of the funniest (or most tragic, depending on how you are feeling), quotes of all time:

"I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."

All hail Dame Rebecca West.