We went today to the 100th. birthday party of Olivier Bell, one of the last survivors of the second generation of the Bloomsbury Group, daughter of A.E. Popham, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, and widow of Quentin Bell, the younger son of Clive and Vanessa Bell. She is still pretty stalwart: a survivor of the pre-war Courtauld Institute, the last of the so-called Monuments Men who helped to restore works of art to their original owners after the second world war, and a veteran of the post-war Arts Council, organising small exhibitions and European loans. She edited Virginia Woolf’s diaries meticulously and helped to establish the Charleston Trust, of which she was until recently an active trustee:-



