John Mitchinson

You can hear both those things happening.

The interviewer has just said to her, well, you like to make your readers pay attention, don't you?

This is what she said.

I just love the idea of Penelope Fitzgerald in the 90s.

She watches The Simpsons, which I should think she watches because the writing is so good and it's funny, but it's also doing other clever things.

And she had grandchildren, of course.

Have you got a bit now?

Yeah.

I'm just going to read this.

We talked about her being funny.

You were talking about comedy.

I'm just going to read two paragraphs from the very beginning of Human Voices.

At the time of the Munich Agreement, a memo had been sent round calling as a matter of urgency for the recording of our country's heritage.

It was headed, lest we forget our Englishry.

Sam had disappeared for over two weeks in one of the Woolseys, pretty infirm even at that time, with an engineer and an elderly German refugee, Dr. Vogel.

Dr. Vogel, cruelly bent, deaf in one ear, but known to be the greatest expert in Europe on recorded atmosphere.

there was not much hope of common sense prevailing.

Dr. Vogel, in spite of his politeness and gentle ganzmannheit, was an obsessive who had been seen to take the arms of passers-by in his bony grip and beg to record their breathing.

For he wished to record England's wheezing before the autumn fogs began.

Have the goodness, sir, to cough a little into my apparatus.