CHRISTINE POULSON Penelope Fitzgerald Archives

Ten novels set in the theatre

Posted on Oct 1, 2015 in Christopher Fowler, Donna Leon, Glen David Gold, Gwendoline Butler, Helen McCloy, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Penelope Fitzgerald, Sarah Rayne, Simon Brett | 8 Comments

Along with my good blogfriend Moira at http://clothesinbooks.blogspot.co.uk I am posting my list of ten novels with theatrical settings. Theatres are closed communities of people engaged in a very stressful profession and so make wonderful settings – for crime novels in particular. Actors are good at lying. Deceiving people is what they do for living. And […]

Hermione Lee’s biography of Penelope Fitzgerald

Posted on Sep 4, 2015 in Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald | 2 Comments

This is the first biography I have read of someone that I’ve actually known. Penelope Fitzgerald was an active member of the William Morris Society of which I was curator, and later vice-chair and then chair in the late 1980s and the 1990s. My memories of her include standing with her on a bitterly cold […]

Ten books set on the Home Front

Posted on May 7, 2015 in Anthony Powell, books set on the home front, Christiana Brand, Elizabeth Bowen, Joyce Dennys, Laura Wilson, Lissa Evans, Margery Allingham, Muriel Spark, Penelope Fitzgerald, Rennie Airth | 12 Comments

Time for another list! We had such fun last time that Moira at Clothesinbooks.com and I have got together again, this time to share our ten favourite books set on the Home Front. Mine are all set in WWII. Here goes . . . First up is Joyce Dennys’s Henrietta’s War (1983 – but written during the […]

Penelope Fitzgerald

Posted on Dec 11, 2013 in Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald, William Morris Society | 6 Comments

I am well into Hermione Lee’s biography of Penelope Fitzgerald and I am riveted. I’ll be blogging about it when I have finished it. It is particularly fascinating to read a biography when the subject is someone you’ve known.I first met Penelope when I was curator at the William Morris Society at Kelmscott House in […]

Closing the Bedroom Door

Posted on Sep 26, 2011 in Gracie, Jane Horrocks, Penelope Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring, Tom Hollander | 2 Comments

It occurred to me the other day that you know you’ve reached a certain age when you write a sex scene and you’re no longer worried about what your mother will think. No, now you’re worrying about what your children will think. I’m know I’m not the only writer to find it difficult to write […]

So I Have Thought of You

Posted on Mar 9, 2009 in collections of letters, Penelope Fitzgerald | 2 Comments

This is a collection of Penelope Fitzgerald’s letters and I was particularly anxious to read them, because I knew her. In fact I actually have a letter from her myself, tucked inside my copy of her marvellous biography of the Knox brothers. I’d written to tell her much I had enjoyed that and her novels […]