Every weekday she went doggedly off to work, typically wearing her father’s tweed jacket over smocks and full skirts and sensible flat shoes, her hair bushy and unkempt (no hairdressers’ bills were possible), with no make-up. But also, all the time, she wanted beauty and art and fine language and ideas, listened to the Third Programme on the radio constantly (they had no gramophone), watched television avidly from 1965 onwards, went to art galleries and cinemas and the Old Vic and to pottery classes, made ceramics, drew Christmas cards, studied Spanish and Russian, read incessantly and widely, and travelled as much as she could inside and outside England. Her spirit, her will, her appetite for life, her interests, her energy were vital and powerful.

– Hermione Lee

This coming after her leaky house boat sank, and her husband nearly died. Penelope Fitzgerald kept her interests close, gave them oxygen. Despite near poverty, she kept going.

Keep going.

Lee, Hermione. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. United States, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. pg 161,162