In this episode recorded in March 2019, Andy and John are joined by Georgina Morley who was then the Non-Fiction Editorial Director at Picador but who cut her teeth as Editorial Assistant to Peter Carson, former Editor in Chief of Penguin (where she learned more in two years than she had in three at university). She is joined by Lucy Scholes, the Senior Editor at McNally Editions, Lucy has written about books, film and art for the Financial Times, the NYR Daily, the New York Times Book Review and Granta. The book under discussion is Penelope Fitzgerald’s Human Voices, her fourth novel, set in Broadcasting House during the Second World War. Before that, John extols the virtues of The Good Immigrant USA (edited by Nikesh Shukla & Chimene Suleyman) and Andy is impressed by Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall.

Books mentioned:

Penelope Fitzgerald – Human Voices; The Beginning of Spring; Offshore; The Blue Flower; At Freddies; The Bookshop; The Golden Child'; A House of Air (contains ‘Curriculum Vitae’)
Nikesh Shukla & Chimene Suleyman – The Good Immigrant USA
Sarah Moss – Ghost Wall
Hermione Lee – Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life
Penelope Fitzgerald – So I Have Thought of You: Selected Letters
Dan Brown – The Da Vinci Code
Muriel Spark – Memento Mori

Other links:
Penelope Fitzgerald on Mastermind (2018)
Penelope Fitzgerald on Meridian (1998)
Jeffrey Archer on Penelope Fitzgerald on A Good Read (2018)
Barneys, Books & Bust-ups: 50 years of the Booker Prize (BBC)