The BBC have today released promotional pictures for the first episode of Life In Squares, a new BBC TV series based around the lives of the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers. The series focuses on the two most well known member of the group, Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell. The first episode will be broadcast on the 27th of July on BBC 2 from 9:00pm to 10:00pm. The cast include  Phoebe Fox as Vanessa Bell; Lydia Leonard as Virginia Woolf; James Norton as Duncan Grant; Sam Hoare as Clive Bell; Edmund Kingsley as Maynard Keynes; Ed Birch as Lytton Strachey and Rob Heaps as Thoby Stephens. More promotional pictures and the episode synopsis below:

Penned by Bafta award-winning writer Amanda Coe (Room at the Top) and produced by Ecosse Films in association with Tiger Aspect Productions, Life In Squares dramatises the close yet often fraught relationship between painter Vanessa Bell and her sister Virginia Woolf, alongside Vanessa’s complicated alliance with gay artist Duncan Grant.

We meet the Stephen sisters in 1905, where a young Vanessa and Virginia are struggling to escape the confines of Victorian England and forge a new life for themselves. Their dream is to find freedom in creativity and live their lives without society’s rules or restrictions.

When their brother’s death rocks their world, Vanessa decides to change her views on marriage and settle down with Clive. Will this marriage prove too much for her unbreakable bond with Virginia? And how will free-spirited Vanessa respond to the challenges of family life and her husband’s infidelity?

Meanwhile, young gay artist Duncan Grant forms a friendship with Vanessa which proves to be one of the most influential of his life. With their love of art and each other uniting them, but kept apart by Duncan’s sexuality, can this companionship stand the test of Bohemian living?