Penelope Fitzgerald's latest book, Human Voices, makes use of her experiences in the BBC during the war to give us another exercise in the fiction of economy and understatement. It is a very English kind of writing, backing away from emotional and stylistic excess; if one had to suggest a literary antithesis I suppose it would be Lawrence Durrell. For my part, give me Mrs Fitzgerald every time….

Penelope Fitzgerald brings off her effects through neat dialogue and a deft hand with the descriptive phrase that nails a place or situation in a way that pages of painstaking description would have failed to do; the BBC as a "cross between a civil service, a powerful moral force, and an amateur theatrical company that wasn't too sure where next week's money was coming from …", a baby "that breathed gently, as though simmering", the BBC's labelling system—"Air Raid Siren...