However, no two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is - in other words, not a thing, but a think.

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.