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Nicholson is well placed to comment on the movie industry. Her husband is the Oscar-nominated screenwriter William Nicholson, who was brought in as a trouble-shooter on Gladiator. She is well aware of the constraints under which film-makers work. “I realise that I sound parochial and carping, but while I’m on the side of the movie-makers, I’m also on the side of reality.”

Kidman, she says, gives no glimmer of Woolf’s sense of humour — a characteristic she believes comes through strongly in her diaries. “My father’s memory was of her always screaming with laughter. They adored her because she was so funny. She was a hoot.”

But she reluctantly concedes that this is not the commonly-perceived view.

Indeed, some have painted a picture of a self-obsessed, snobbish and difficult woman whose waspish letters and diaries spared no one. Nicholson bristles at such criticism.

“That wasn’t my father’s view of her at all. Yes, she could be scathing, but tell me someone who isn’t a bit rude in private.”

Nicholson does concede, however, that Woolf’s intellect could make her a formidable and wearing companion.

“Although she was undoubtedly very witty and funny, all that charisma could be a bit exhausting.

“Vanessa gives a description in a letter to her eldest son Julian, saying: ‘Virginia was here this evening and, of course, she was stunningly amusing. But I just long for some normal talk.’ I think she was very high-octane and best in small doses. She would fix people with her eyes and say: ‘Tell me about yourself.’ Most people’s reaction was, ‘Help! Do I have to?’, but this was the raw material of her novels.

“And the power of her novels is her extraordinary grasp of the everyday. Everyone who met her said there was no question about it: she was a genius.”

The opening sequence of The Hours recreates Woolf’s final moments as she walks from her Rodmell home along the path which leads to the River Ouse.

“They show her putting stones in her pockets, as we all know happened, and arriving at the riverbank, where she walks into the river,” Nicholson says. “Then there are these wonderful underwater shots as she’s drowning, which must have been difficult to film.

“But although it sounds trivial, they have chosen to show the river as narrow, deep-flowing and overhung by trees — with sunlight glinting through the branches.