John Mitchinson

But...

No, I've completely blanked because that was so good.

And the show's over.

She loved television.

She did love television, yes.

And appropriately enough, this novel, Human Voices, is set at the BBC during the Second World War, the time of the phony war and radio broadcasting to the nation.

Lucy, let me ask you first, when or where did you first read Human Voices?

And you and I had a discussion, didn't we, in the run up to this about which novel of Penelope Fitzgerald's we were going to do.

We did, yes.

Such as my Fitzgerald mania at the moment.

And why did you choose Human Voices?

Like all her novels, really, you know, there seems to be, we were talking earlier, if you read one of these books quickly, as one of the reviews of Human Voices said, which you, of course, could do easily because the style is so seemingly light and amusing, you will miss all the gaps.

And the gaps often in Penelope Fitzgerald, the spaces is where the real events, the action, the feeling is happening.

Yeah.

And, George, where did you first encounter Penelope Fitzgerald?

Wow.

I knew that.

So you encountered her.

We should say for anyone who doesn't know that she does a remarkable thing, which she doesn't publish her first novel until she is 60.

The second novel that she writes, The Bookshop, is shortlisted for the Booker Prize.