A Sit-Down With Virginia Woolf

Why I love a literary statue with a bench

I was thrilled last week to finally get to sit down next to Virginia Woolf. Whenever I walk along this stretch of the river in Richmond-upon-Thames, the bench belonging to the full-size bronze cast by Laury Dizengremel is always occupied. Which is another thrill - that people throng to Virginia's bench; that they appreciate this extraordinary writer. (There are, I should add, lots of benches dotted on this riverbank, but it's this one that's most popular).

I love that the statue is designed so that you are sitting in Virginia's embrace, that she's looking at you as though in the middle of a conversation. Inviting more chat. But more than anything, I love that she is smiling. It's a wonderfully vibrant and happy statue for a woman whose life ended so tragically.

Earlier this year I sat on Agatha Christie's bench. The sculpture, in Wallingford and created by Ben Twiston-Davies, is another piece that encourages you to sit down and talk. I told Agatha how much I loved her stories as a teenager and still love them now, and how reading her clever mysteries snuggled under a warm blanket is one of life's joys.

Maggie Hamblin's Oscar Wilde bench in London's Charing Cross offers yet another opportunity to sit down and share a few words with a literary giant. A Conversation with Oscar Wilde features the writer's head - he's smoking and smiling - atop a green granite coffin. It's the work of Maggi Hambling (if you don't know much about her, this very funny episode of This Cultural Life on BBC Sounds is a great place to start). The bench caused some controversy when it was unveiled in 1998, but I think it's wonderful.

So what did Virginia and I talk about? Books, of course. I told her that I'm going to reread all of her novels - I studied them at university, aged 20, and I was too busy annotating every page to fully immerse myself in her writing. I came across an excerpt from Mrs Dalloway recently and longed to read all of it; I'm going to revisit her writing now I'm in my fifties. I told her too that I have several books on the go: Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See for my book club; Anthony Horowitz' latest mystery Marble Hall Murders, for fun; a reread of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as I'm tutoring GCSEs again this year; and finally another set text: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. Four very different books.

'And then you're next,' I tell Virginia. 'I'll come back soon. There'll be lots to talk about.'