Penelope Fitzgerald

 Out of the blue on Friday, Peter WhasApped me to ask, "Who was the famous convert who nearly nabbed  Harold Macmillan for the church  when he was at Oxford?"

In the process of finding out it was Ronald Knox I discovered that Penelope Fitzgerald was his niece.

Herr last novel was The Blue Flower.

Set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century, The Blue Flower is the story of the brilliant Fritz von Hardenberg, a graduate of the Universities of Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg, learned in Dialectics and Mathematics, who later became the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis. The passionate and idealistic Fritz needs his father’s permission to announce his engagement to his ‘heart’s heart’, his ‘true Philosophy’, twelve-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends. How can it be so?

It might be a good companion piece to Magnificent Rebels (Icons passim).