Human Voices

A tribute to the unsung and quintessentially English heroism of imperfect people. New Criterion

When British listeners tuned in to the BBC's Nine O'Clock News in the middle of 1940, they had no idea what human dramas and follies were unfolding behind the scenes. Targeted by enemy bombers, the BBC had turned its concert hall into a dormitory for both sexes, and personal chaos rivaled the political. Amidst the bombs and broadcasts two program directors fight for power while their younger female assistants fall prey to affairs, abandonment, and unrequited love. Reading this intimate glimpse behind the scenes of the BBC in its heyday, one is left with the sensation, William Boyd wrote in London Magazine, that this is what it was really like.

Human Voices is funny and touching and authentic, but it is more. It is affirmative in the best and most important sense. Sunday Times

Perfectly describes the moment when the British stiff upper lip begins to tremble in the face of overwhelming historical and emotional events. Publishers Weekly

PENELOPE FITZGERALD (1916 2000) was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction for The Blue Flower, the Booker Prize for Offshore, and three of her novels The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, and The Beginning of Spring were short-listed for the Booker Prize."