In one of the 14 stories in Nothing Missing but the Samovar, an elderly spinster makes a habit of walking in Hyde Park: 'She studied her fellow walkers with avid attention … She delighted in novelty: eccentricities of dress, perplexing snatches of conversation. She moved up and down the wide paths, across the grass, between the neat flowerbeds, alert and expectant—an inquisitive ghost foraging among the walkers.' It goes without saying that people who write about people are inquisitive, but not all writers have Penelope Lively's knack of effacing herself to a ghost's invisibility. She is as tactful as her cathedral officials in 'Interpreting the Past', who are careful never to intrude on visitors: 'The past has no right to impose itself on people; it is there to be taken or left, as we see fit.' Penelope Penelope Lively 1933– Photograph by Mark GersonLively does not impose...