It is June in 1939, and the inhabitants of a country house prepare to host the annual village pageant in its grounds. It will tell the stories of English history, as it does every year. Through her characters' passionate musings and private dramas, and through the enigmatic figure of the pageant's author, Miss La Trobe, Virginia Woolf's playful final novel both celebrates and mocks Englishness, and re-creates the elusive role of the artist.