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She was awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in 1996 in recognition of an outstanding contribution to literature. The Means of Escape, a collection of short stories previously published in anthologies and newspapers, includes 'Our Lives are Only Lent to Us', a story discovered among the author's papers after her death. Her acclaimed novel The Blue Flower, published in 1995, is a fictionalised account of the life of the German Romantic poet Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), and his love for a twelve-year-old girl.

A number of historical novels set outside England followed, including Innocence (1986), set in Tuscany during the 1950s; The Beginning of Spring (1988), an account of life in Moscow before the 1917 revolution; and The Gate of Angels (1990), set in Cambridge on the eve of the First World War. If you have concerns about how we have used your personal information, you also have the right to complain to a privacy regulator. We publish a Literature Newsletter when we have news and features on UK and international literature, plus opportunities for the industry to share. Penelope Fitzgerald was born in Lincoln on 17 December 1916 and was educated at Somerville College, Oxford.The United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. I have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?

British Council complies with data protection law in the UK and laws in other countries that meet internationally accepted standards. The Beginning of Spring (1988) and The Gate of Angels (1990) were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. A collection of non-fiction by Penelope Fitzgerald, A House of Air: Selected Writings, was published in November 2003.Her father, Edmund Knox, was editor of Punch magazine during the 1930s, and her Uncle, Dillwyn Knox, worked on breaking the Enigma code at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.