5 FEBRUARY 2000, Page 25

Woolf's error

From Mr Philip Hensher Sir: I wonder if Jonathan Keates can cast any light on an apparent error in Virginia Woolf? Did she really believe, until the end of her life, that champagne was opened with a corkscrew? The passage in question is in her last novel, Between the Acts.

'All I need,' said Mrs Manresa ogling Can- dish, as if he were a real man, not a stuffed man, 'is a corkscrew.' She had a bottle of champagne, but no corkscrew.

If this is a mistake, it is surely not one that Arnold Bennett would ever have made. Or is it one of Mrs Woolf s famous impenetrable subtleties?

Philip Hensher

hensher@dircon.co.uk