I believe that people should write biographies only about people they love, or understand, or both. Novels, on the other hand, are often better if they're about people the writer doesn't like very much.

She was the niece of theologian and crime writer Ronald Knox cryptographer Dilly Knox and Bible scholar Wilfred Knox. I suppose they were unusual but I still think that they were right and insofar as the world disagrees with them I disagree with the world. It drew on the author's experiences working in a Southwold bookshop.

In 2012 The Observer named her final novel The Blue Flower as one of "The 10 best historical novels". Penelope Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning English novelist poet essayist and biographer.