Virginia Woolf's "Lighthouse" sold

From BBC World News: A Cornish beach thought to have inspired Virginia Woolf's novel To The Lighthouse has been sold for £80,000.

A private buyer from London, who is originally from Cornwall, bought Upton Towans beach in Gwithian at auction.

The Hall for Cornwall theatre in Truro will receive the proceeds as previous owner Dennis Arbon said he wanted the sale to benefit the people of Cornwall.

The buyer is understood to be keen to keep the 76-acre area unspoilt. There are also planning curbs on development.

Tim Brinkman of the Hall for Cornwall said: "I'm absolutely delighted. It's a great fillip for the theatre."

As a child, Virginia Woolf spent many holidays in a St Ives guest house from which she could see the lighthouse on Godrevy Island.

Although her 1927 novel is set in the Hebrides, the author used her recollections from childhood as inspiration for her most famous novel.

"It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it reached, say, the letter Q."
-To The Lighthouse