Penelope Lively
Penelope Lively
Dame Penelope Margaret Lively DBE FRSLis a British writer of fiction for both children and adults. She has won both the Booker Prizeand the Carnegie Medal for British children's books...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth17 March 1933
photography past bombs
The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.
memories preoccupation operations
There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history.
past fiction tricky
The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.
memories way linear
I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.
fiction get-away
I rather like getting away from fiction.
children thinking might
I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.
past identity needs
We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.
kings grateful agnostic
I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for.
war history courses
All history, of course, is the history of wars.
writing wells
I didn't write anything until I was well over 30.
climate novel
Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going.
book want made
I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements.