BLOOMSBURY BOLTHOLES

Bloomsbury. The name conjures up visions of bookish types on bicycles, free-wheeling through leafy London squares. Sitting between the busy central London districts of King’s Cross, Clerkenwell, Holborn and Fitzrovia, the Bloomsbury quarter has always been a bit different.

London’s literary and intellectual capital has a reputation not only as a place for heavyweight learning – it harbours many of the University College London buildings – but also for liberalism and free-thinking. It was made famous in the years between the two World Wars by the Bloomsbury Group, a coterie of influential writers and artists, including Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell. Their experimental lifestyle – they “lived in squares, painted in circles and loved