“T he thing all women hate is to be thought dull,” says the title character of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s 1926 novel, Lolly Willowes , an early feminist classic about a middle-aged woman who moves to the countryside, sells her soul to the devil and becomes a witch.

Though their lives are so limited by society, Lolly observes, women “know they are dynamite … know in their hearts how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are”.

Warner herself was anything but dull: a writer, translator, musicologist and political activist who wrote seven novels, extensive poetry and contributed more than 150 short stories to the New Yorker, more than any other female writer. She was also a communist who volunteered for the Red Cross during the Spanish civil war and an LGBTQ+ pioneer, living

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