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“... of science and art’ that Dr Sacks’s conclusion hopes for, is immediately followed by Penelope Fitzgerald’s unhurried but rapid and suggestive ‘The Prescription’, an enigmatic fable set in 19th-century Istanbul which confronts traditional medicine and medical ethics with the new and ambitious ‘science’ of psychoanalysis. Both pieces are ...”

“... in this respect with the pre-Portnoy, and much more reserved, My friend says it’s bulletproof by Penelope Mortimer. But Tit for Tat has none of Roth’s or Jong’s jollity – the secrets are dirtier and much more frightening. Bargate’s narrative tone is traumatised and post-operative. What literary flourishes she offers are flattened by the awful ...”

“... fact he rather looked down on it: ‘Happiness has never been one of my great aspirations.’ When Penelope Mortimer arrived to interview him for the Observer magazine in 1978, she could barely cross the threshold. Dunsmuir calmly explained that ‘the front door had been off its hinges for some time and it was difficult to get things fixed.’ Graham’s ...”

“... writers.’ So into the witness-box come successively Edna O’Brien, Margaret Drabble, Penelope Mortimer, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch. In the case of three, perhaps four, of the witnesses nothing is said about how they give their evidence. In the two years that Rebecca West was contributing to the Clarion, 1912 and 1913, she seldom wrote about ...”

“... young men or even small boys. But he had also begun to live a double life, sidelining his wife, Penelope Chetwode, a field marshal’s daughter (whom he nicknamed ‘Philth’) in favour of his mistress, the Hon. Elizabeth Cavendish, a duke’s sister (‘Phoeble’). He had met her at dinner in 1951, when she was 25, describing ‘my new friend’ to a ...”

“... the West finished if he had seen it. So one goes back to British Vogue. A witty piece by John Mortimer: a QC of his calibre is a born interviewer, of course, though it took editors years to cotton on to the idea. Among the short stories, I struck old memories of Brendan Behan. Before he was discovered by Joan Littlewood, he used to wander into my office ...”

“... translations); she was also a regular reviewer for Blackwood’s. It was a ‘fighting life’, in Penelope Fitzgerald’s words; Oliphant called it ‘an immoral, or at least an un-moral, mode of life, dashing forward in the face of all obstacles and taking up all burdens with a kind of levity, as if my strength and resource could never fail’. Her ...”