The Ramseys have always spent their holidays at their summer house on Skye – holidays filled with noise, joy and the stuff of family life that might go on forever. But as time passes, bringing with it war and death, the summer home stands empty until one day the family return to make the long-postponed visit to the lighthouse. To the Lighthouse was published in 1927 and was more commercially successful than any of Woolf’s previous novels. Woolf herself thought it ‘easily the best of my books’. The book printed three times in its first year and went on to become one of Woolf’s best-loved works.