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Hyper-romantic,” is how Polly Stenham describesher elegant, slightly crumbling Bloomsbury house,before rolling her eyes and letting out a faux-operatic peal: “It’s a bit, ‘Ahhhhhh!’” Three yearsago, the award-winning playwright, who shot to fame at 19when her debut That Face became a sensation at the RoyalCourt, moved into the same imposing Georgian square incentral London that Virginia Woolf, DH Lawrence andDorothy L Sayers once called home – and seems happy toplay to type. When I visit on a sunshiny spring afternoon, herhallway is stuffed to bursting with cardboard boxes of books.“They’re my Dad’s,” explains the 31-year-old, barefoot ina denim minidress, her faintly candyfloss-hued hair scrapedoff her face. She leads me into a grand sitting room thatblends scruffy-genteel English classicism with casual quirks:a gargoyle, a restored copper fire surround with a bulging``````PlaywrightPolly Stenham’sBloomsbury house isa compelling realm,finds Ellie Pithers.Photographs byLuis Ridao``````clam-shell relief, and artworks by Peter Blake. There arewaist-high towers of books covering almost every inch ofspare floorboard. She gestures to a recent find: a 1950s-erahistory of female sexuality, with an amusingly graphic chapteron masturbation. “It’s amazing, exhausting, amazing,exhausting,” she says, of the book-sorting process. “A bit likedoing up this place.”Stenham – whose reimagining of August Strindberg’s MissJulie, starring Vanessa Kirby, will premiere at the NationalTheatre this month – purchased this Grade II listed housein 2015. It took two and a half years to renovate, partlybecause “everything kept going wrong”. Luckily, she had herbest friend Rachel Chudley, an interior designer, on hand tohelp. The two met at boarding school and lived together inStenham’s previous home, a rambling Highgate townhousethat became somewhat notorious in her years of early fame >Rooms ofone’s ownAbove: Stenham inher kitchen – sittingbeneath a drawingby her late mother.Above right: apainting by FayeWei Wei hangsbetween the“pods” in Polly’sbathroom. Hair:Tyler Johnston.Make-up: CarolynGallyer. Stylist:Florence Arnold``````77POLLY WEARS SWEATER, LOEWE. TROUSERS, LEMAIRE. DIAMOND RING, SOLANGE AZAGURY-PARTRIDGE. OTHER JEWELLERY, HER OWN. WITH THANKS TO WILD AT HEARTLIVING