The Knox Brothers

by Penelope Fitzgerald

Here is a biography whose eccentric genius perfectly matches that of its subjects. Penelope Fitzgerald tells the lives of four extraordinary Englishmen–her father and his brothers–with style and wit. Here is the story of a deeply fascinating family mind, shared by four brothers and passed along to their remarkable biographer.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Penelope Mary Fitzgerald was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 The Times listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". The Observer in 2012 placed her final novel, The Blue Flower, among "the ten best historical novels". A.S. Byatt called her, "Jane Austen’s nearest heir for precision and invention."

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald was born Penelope Mary Knox in December, 1916. Her father was Edmund Knox, the eldest of four Knox brothers: Edmund, born 1881, Dillwyn, born 1884, Wilfred, born 1886 and Ronald, 1888. To the Knox family were also born two sisters, Ethel, who remained at home, and Winifred, who married and also wrote detective stories (as, for a time, did Ronald). However, this biography is of the four, Knox brothers and so, a little sadly, the two sisters are minimal to the book.

Without doubt, though, the four brothers give quite enough scope for one book. Edmund was the editor of Punch, Dillwyn (Dilly) a cryptographer during WWI and at Bletchley, and the two younger brothers both influential in the Church, in their own, very different ways. As such, this biography will take you from Oxford, through spiritual debate, theology, and on to Enigma, as well as the world of publishing, politics and true individualism. It will also be full of the famous and influential, from Keynes to Kipling and Churchill (who, it was fair to say, that Dilly did not completely trust and who thought the less the great man knew, the better, as he could be indiscrete).

Fitzgerald asserts that, “When you employed one of the four Knox brothers you got absolute integrity,” and you feel how proud she is of the statement. However, these brothers were also wonderfully eccentric and this is full of stories which will make you smile. I think my favourite was about Edmund, who, before he became editor of Punch, felt that the previous man in charge may have lost some of his sense of humour. As a way of testing this, he, and his colleagues, decided to host a dinner, where they would hide beneath the table and then jump out to surprise him. However, on his arrival at the empty table, the editor motioned the waiter to pull out his chair, settled his napkin and then began eating; leading to his colleagues having to climb, sheepishly, from beneath the table – without a single comment – and begin the meal…

This was a delight and is just full of fascinating memories, stories and accounts of four, influential and intelligent men, who shared a bond which was, at times, stretched and under pressure, but never broken. I look forward to reading more by Penelope Fitzgerald, who is an author I am only recently coming to appreciate.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A.S. Byatt calls The Knox Brothers ‘A masterpiece… a portrait of English intelligence, eccentricity and wisdom’. In this biography, newly reissued by 4th Estate with a striking and rather lovely cover, author Penelope Fitzgerald presents a portrait of her father and his brothers. The book was first published in 1977, and was one of Fitzgerald’s earliest works. Her father, Edmund Knox – or Evoe, as he was known by all – was ‘a brilliant journalist, humanist and Fleet Street legend’, two of his brothers, Wilfred and Ronald, were both priests, and the youngest, Dillwyn, ‘possibly the most enigmatic brother’, was ‘a Greek scholar, mathematical genius and notoriously bad driver’.

The interesting preface to this edition has been penned by Hermione Lee, whose most recent book is a biography of Penelope Fitzgerald herself. The introduction has been written by Richard Holmes, who states that ‘As a Knox, she [Penelope Fitzgerald] was descended from one of the great intellectual, Anglo-Catholic clans of late Victorian England’. He goes on to describe that The Knox Brothers is Fitzgerald’s ‘remarkable tribute to this family inheritance. It is a strikingly original group biography’. He sets out the main details of the lives of the Knox brothers, and the things which they have come to be remembered for.

Fitzgerald writes in her own introduction to the volume that: ‘In this book I have done my best to tell the story of my father and his three brothers. All four of them were characteristically reticent about themselves, but, at the same time, most unwilling to let any statement pass without question’. She describes the way in which she has ‘tried to take into account both their modesty and their love of truth, and to arrive at the kind of biography of which they would have approved’.

The Knox brothers, ‘descended from land settlers in Ulster’, were born between 1881 and 1888, and spent their formative years in the Edwardian era. Their family tree, which stretches back for several generations, has been included, along with a concise bibliography and rather large index. The book has been split into nine sections, ranging from ‘Beginnings’ to ‘Endings’. The brothers were brought up in an Evangelical household along with their two sisters, Ethel and Winifred (later to become the novelist Winifred Peck). Fitzgerald talks of the way in which the men in question ‘gave their working lives to journalism, cryptography, classical scholarship, the Anglican Church, [and] the Catholic Church’.

Fitzgerald’s father was the favourite child of the family: ‘Among a courageous group, he was the most daring’. Each and every one of the boys, from their early days, is described as clever and remarkable – Dillwyn, for example, ‘did not have to “do” sums, [as] he “saw” them’. Fitzgerald tells of their schooling and scholarships in distant towns, describing the way in which ‘In this family which breathed the air of scholarship, but had constant difficulty in making ends meet, education was the way to the future’.

Indeed, the education of the boys allowed them to advance rather far in their chosen careers. Evoe, for example, worked at iconic satirical magazine Punch, during what Richard Holmes states was ‘a perilous time (1932-1948) when the magazine was still a great institution of national identity’. It is fair to say that Fitzgerald’s family made important contributions to British history. Her father fought in the First World War and survived the Battle of Passchendaele, and Uncle Dillwyn, who ‘appeared to live entirely on black coffee and chocolate’ worked upon the Enigma Code, which was instrumental in ending the Second World War. Her family are justly remembered kindly. Wilfred worked as a chaplain at the University of Cambridge, and upon his death, ‘so many students wanted to get into Pembroke Chapel for the memorial service that there had to be a ballot for tickets. It was hard to envisage life in college without their tattered chaplain’.

Many anecdotes have been included throughout, and a lot of these are amusing and heartwarming. When staying in a different house for the night and encountering electric light within a dwelling for the first time, Wilfred and Ronald ‘sat in their nightgowns, taking strict turns, as they always did, to turn it [the light] on and off, and nobody told them to stop’. Wilfred, when he was around fourteen years old, went on to collect ‘Bits of Old Churches’. ‘These’, says Fitzgerald, ‘were souvenirs, stones and chippings which must genuinely have fallen off and been honestly picked up, otherwise they did not “count”, though Eddie and Dilly sometimes assisted with a good hard blow at the church wall which Wilfred never suspected’. Quotes and recollections have also been taken into account in each chapter, and most of these hail from the letters or memories of other family members. It is clear that Fitzgerald greatly respects her ancestors, but at no time is she overly gushing or biased about them. She tells of their stories with both wit and warmth.

A lot of the details in The Knox Brothers are recounted in Hermione Lee’s Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. The entirety of the book is, of course, well written and so interesting, but this reviewer would suggest that a long period of time is left between reading both of the aforementioned books, as they do overlap rather a lot. In The Knox Brothers, Fitzgerald has presented a very well considered portrait of a most intriguing family, each and every one of whom deserves to be remembered.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This four-person biography covers my absolute favorite period of history, the end of the Victorian era through mid 20th century England. The more I can read on this time period from the more angles, the better. Penelope Fitzgerald is the daughter of the oldest Knox brother, Edmund, so she is writing about her own family. There are very few personal mentions though. It’s a scholarly and readable biography. Actually, I would have loved more family lore, more personal stories. But I can appreciate that she wanted to make this as objective as possible.

The four Knox brothers were born in the 1880s. Edmund (Eddie) became the editor of Punch. Dillwyn (Dilly) was a Classics scholar and cryptographer (including at Bletchley Park during WW2). Wilfred was a High Church Anglican priest. Ronald (Ronnie) was a Roman Catholic priest. Their father was a Church of England bishop, so there was considerable scandal in the family when Ronnie converted to Catholicism. Fitzgerald lightly touches on this at points in the biography. It caused lifelong sorrow for Wilfred, who longed to work with Ronnie in the Anglican Church. Bishop Knox cut Ronald out of his will. Even so, the brothers had distinct and endearing family traits and good adult relationships that I found enjoyable to read about.

Each brother had a brilliant mind and they certainly benefitted from the classical education they received at their public schools and Oxford/Cambridge. I’m fascinated by men and women who grew up in this posh, highly educated milieu and how the world wars affected them. Ronnie is the most fascinating figure in this to me because of his conversion and the people he met because of it (like Evelyn Waugh). I would have liked to have more details about the other religious and literary figures the Knox brothers knew, including people like Ernest Shepard, the aforementioned Waugh, Rose Macaulay, etc.

The puzzling part of the biography is the omission of their sister, Winifred Peck, who was also a novelist of repute. I have read two of her books and loved them both. I would have enjoyed even more a biography called The Five Knox Siblings instead of just The Four Knox Brothers. It seems an odd omission given that Fitzgerald herself is a novelist. I know Winifred lived in Edinburgh so perhaps Fitzgerald simply didn’t know her as well.

I found the ending rushed as well. It ends with Ronnie’s death in 1957 even though Eddie lived until 1971. I’m a nosy person and wanted the details of his final years. Perhaps it was too close to home for the author.

That being said, I love a biography about siblings who make their marks on the world in various ways. It’s fascinating from a family culture perspective (e.g. the Brontes). I enjoyed this very much, and I hope to find more of Ronnie’s writing in particular.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

What extraordinary brothers! And having a Man Booker prize niece as your biographer doesn't hurt either.

The four of them achieved great distinction in very different fields, united, however, by their common affection and intellectual vigor. It is quite interesting to read biographies that so graphically illustrate that as recently as the last century, issues of denomination of faith with the fine distinctions, could make huge breaks in families. The search for authentic voice - of literature, of God, of message in cryptology - seem to have also united the family.

Their rigor and sense of probity are quite extraordinary, and seem of a near-forgotten era; those were virtues prized far more than fame or fortune. Reading it makes our age and intellectuals seem rather self-appointed and morally feeble, at best.

At the end, their love, each with a somewhat stifled 'craving for human affection,' defined them as much as their achievements. Ronald quoted a Greek epigram in one of his final letters. It is fitting, and touching to perhaps all of us old readers who miss friends, who crave and sometimes find human affection:

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed.
I wept when I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are they pleasant voices, they nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

[Martin Wauck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read plenty of books but rarely read a book twice in one year, so I figured I would say a thing or two about Fitzgerald’s unexpectedly charming, thought-provoking, and, ultimately, haunting biography of her father and uncles.

The Knox brothers of the title -- Edmund, Dillwyn, Wilfred, Ronald – were the sons of Edmund Knox, an old-school Evangelical and the Anglican Bishop of Manchester. All were prominent and successful in their own ways in the first half of twentieth-century. Edmund was the editor of "Punch"; Dillwyn was an exceptionally important cryptographer in both World Wars; Wilfred became a prominent priest in the Labor movement; Ronald became a Catholic priest, was a popular apologist, and translated the Bible.

Fitzgerald, however, was the daughter of Edmund and is interested in her father and uncles as both more and less than prominent public personages. She chose to write a group biography precisely because she wanted to get at the relationships among the brothers, how it was, as she says, that four very different people “shared one mind, one sense of humor.” In illuminating these relationships, she explores the link between intellect and emotion, how four exceptional minds who differed on many ultimate questions, were, nevertheless, bound by ties of affection and love.

Anyone who has set themselves the task of investigating the emotional bonds among the Victorians must be something of a detective to tease out the traces of emotion and feeling left in diaries, letters, and old photographs. Part of the charm of the book, however, is Fitzgerald’s absolute mastery of period detail that allows her to get underneath the reticence of her ancestors. She manages to shed light on significant events in their lives without ever forcing matters, as when she quotes her grandfather, the Bishop’s, diary, which describes his proposal to his wife as “a profitable conversation in the greenhouse.”

Fitzgerald skillfully juxtaposes the Knox family’s hardscrabble upbringing – a father busy with managing parishes and dioceses; moving after the early death of their mother; and all the rough-housing and teasing that goes with growing up in a large family – with the very real bonds of affection that developed. Their sister, perhaps overwhelmed in a small house with four clever brothers, sent her fiancé postcards with references to Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. However, her brothers caught on and, occasionally, altered the references, so that one declaration of feeling was met with a random line explaining “for still, the more he works, the more/ do his weak ankles swell.”

Fitzgerald, however, is at her best when describing the tensions and shortcomings among the four brothers who had absorbed the high Victorian dedication to truth and finding the right way to live but taken it in widely varying directions. As she asks after describing Ronald’s decision to convert to Catholicism against his father’s wishes, “God speaks to us through the intellect, and through the intellect we should direct our lives. But if we are creatures of reason, what are we to do with our hearts?”

With this high seriousness goes a wry appreciation of the shortcomings of her family members. As she describes her uncle Dillwyn’s final days, she notes how the brilliant cryptographer who deciphered the “Zimmerman Telegram” in World War I (and, thereby, brought the U.S. into the war) and solved multiple versions of the German Enigma machine in World War II lay in his bed looked after by his wife. "These two people had loved each other for twenty years without being able to make each other happy. They would have given the world, now they were at the point of separation, to understand one another."

Thus, combining intellectual work and the bonds entailed in living with others is delicate and often results in misunderstandings and confusion. The closest she comes to recognizing the possibility of sustained realization of this effort is when describing her socialist uncle Wilfred’s involvement with the Oratory of the Good Shepherd, a loose community of vowed Anglican religious centered in Cambridge, dedicated to both “intellectual labor” and social outreach, whose eccentric members found in its rules the support to bear with each other’s quirks. While Wilfred became a beloved spiritual mentor and guide to a generation of undergraduates and faculty, these communities, however, were not for everyone.

All this, however, raises the question, of whether the Knox brothers might have been better served by openness. For their modernist contemporaries who chafed under the restrictions of Victorian reticence, the answer was a given. In keeping with her father and uncles, Fitzgerald never directly addresses the issue. Her portrayal indicates that perhaps reticence, forbearance, and willingness to recognize moments when the claims of the intellect fall short were precisely what allowed love to flourish among these brothers.

Fitzgerald is quite reticent about her own role in all these events, only mentioning herself obliquely as a “niece” in various conversations. For Fitzgerald herself, the book was a critical point as she began writing again after the death of her father and the winding down of a difficult marriage. In it, she takes stock of her family and origins just as she embarked on a series of novels that reconsider these themes in aspects of her own life (unsuccessful bookshop owner, life on a barge on the Thames, harried tutor in a school for theater students) and in various historical settings (1950s Italy, pre-World War I Russia, Romantic-era Germany).

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite good, unexpectedly somber. A very gentle portrait of an exceedingly odd family.

[Daniel Polansky]

I read this book.

[Yooperprof · Rating 4 out of 5]

The randomness of life. . . the peculiarity of families. . . the intensity of belief, and of unbelief . . . the relentless search for patterns in what initially appears to be a random universe . . . the calm essence of the English countryside.

Careful readers of this collective biography of Penelope Fitzgerald's uncles (and her father) will discover many clues to understanding the matrix of meanings in her delightful and deep fiction.

One brother the editor of "Punch," England's most successful humor magazine. One brother a brilliant classical scholar and code-breaker who played a central role in deciphering the German Enigma code-machine during World War II. One brother a quiet and holy Anglo-Catholic recluse. One brother a widely beloved Roman Catholic priest who translated the Bible singlehandedly - and wrote detective novels on the side.

Penelope Fitzgerald was a Booker-prize winning novelist who published a much-admired series of small, gem-like novels from the late 1970s through the 1990s. Set in a variety of places - Italy, Germany, Russia, London - and in a variety of times - the 1950s, pre World War I Cambridge, early 19th century Germany - they are among my favorite recent fictions. In "The Knox Brothers" you really get a clear sense "where she was coming from." I much enjoyed the fondness and the sympathy which was behind nearly every page of this "family history." This was only the second book which Penelope Fitzgerald wrote, but it is written with a modest mastery that readers will also find in her later books.

[Lesley Tilling · Rating 4 out of 5]

It wasn't very long ago that this nation had a spiritual life, embodied in all kinds of churches. High Church was very like Roman Catholic Mass, with focus on the inner life, and bells and smells in its way of worship. Other churches went more for the missionary outreach amongst the less privileged of the big cities and run boys' clubs and days out. They were all run by utterly faithful and dedicated men and women. They were not only devout but they were also learned; having been educated in Latin and Greek in good schools and good universities. When I think of the values that were inculcated by my education, between 1972 and 1979 I realise these years were the last hurrah of a view of the world that had no aspirations to be richer or to acquire more stuff. It was not to last much longer and when it fell it was as though no one remembered it at all.

The Knox brothers were four sons of a clergyman who had the misfortune to lose their birth mother when they were children, but their father quite soon acquired a second wife who was able to make them a happy home. The eldest, Eddie, was a talented poet who was quite brilliant at parodies and eventually became editor of Punch. The second, Dillwyn, was a clever Mathematician (and atheist) who served his country in the field of cryptography. The third, Wilfred, became a selfless vicar, outstandingly lacking in material ambition, and the fourth, Ronnie, also entered the Church, but the wrong Church - after long soul-searching he became a Roman Catholic Bishop. His father was heart-broken that his clever, witty son had gone over to the wrong side. It all seems so difficult to fathom now.

Penelope Fitzgerald was the daughter of Eddie, brought up in Hampstead, and an academic achiever at Oxford in the family tradition. She didn't have the financial security to write for a living until she was middle-aged, and this is the second book she published. Her writer's voice is quietly amused by the family stories of unworldly men getting into situations for which they are not equal; but is sharp when recounting the sad progress of history.

Here is an example of one of the unworldly men being kind to a brother in the middle of the Great War. "In the summer of 1916, [Dillwyn] knowing that Ronnie had left Shrewsbury and was at a wretchedly loose end, he suggested he might just as well come and work in the department [cryptography/intelligence]. To Dilly, all the long-drawn-out suffering over his youngest brother was a matter of unrealities; we pray, no one answers, the Churches dispute to the death over how to go on speaking to someone who is not there. But he gladly made room for Ronnie between the end of the table and the bath, [this was in a room in the Admiralty] and so another unlikely figure, in clerical garb, joined the already unlikely Room 40.

Ronnie mentioned once, quite mildly, that Dilly had never explained to him exactly what he was meant to be doing."

Here is another example of P. F.'s tone.

"After the first battle of Ypres in November 1914 the British armies, at the cost of 32,000 casualties, held on to the Channel ports, and both sides dug into positions which were never altered by more than about thirty miles during the next few years. After this, the main task of an infantry regiment was to be shot at or shelled."

The memory of this book that stays with me is the power-house of the nursery schoolroom from which all the boys won scholarships to great schools.

"there were stirrings, intimations of nature and poetry and human weakness, which could never be confided in [either the bishop or Mrs K.]. There were certain aspects of sea and cloud and open country that brought to them, as it did to Housman's Shropshire Land, "into my heart an air that kills" - certain poetry too, that would always have the power to bring them together, Sylvie and Bruno, Catullus, Matthew Arnold, Housman himself, Cory's Epitaph:

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed.
I wept when I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
...
"Still every morning, at family prayers, the whole household knelt down together, while the ancient coffee-machine simmered ferociously in the background, and the unity of peace, like that of England itself, seemed unlikely to be broken."

One feels that P.F. kept to the values of the family she had been born in to, recognising that her inheritance was to do with class, connections and education but not money, and that this gave her her unique voice, which is graceful and dignified, bold without being showy, and very rare.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Sherlockian disclosure: I was led to this book by a remark made in one of the books about the codebreakers of Bletchley Park during World War II. I don't recall which one it was, either The Blechley Girls [book:The Bletchley Girls|25434893] or The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The WWII Codebreaking Centre and the Men and Women Who Worked There In it, whichever book it was, was a reference to page 38 of this book "Developing a keenly critical spirit, they detected a number of inaccuracies, even downright contradictions, in the Sherlock Holmes stories, and sent a list of them to Conan Doyle in an envelope with four dried orange pips, in allusion to the threatening letter in The Sign of the Four" They were probably all four brothers ["the Four"], but the Bletchley Park book said that Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox, the cryptographer of the four in their youth, was the sender. [The story with the threatening letter was actually "The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips"] I hope to find in this book the letter the Knox brothers wrote to Doyle. No such luck. No, it was not Father Ronald Knox's Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes (published 1912) and Sir Arthur's amused reply. Any Sherlockian or Holmesian who knows the whereabouts of the letter - assuming ACD kept it - and what was written in it, and by whom, I hope will tell me.]

Now The Review: It is an interesting book about four eccentric Englishmen and brothers, written by the daughter of the eldest, Edmund. Edmund was the journalist (editor of Punch). Dilly was the Greek scholar who his niece wrote, could solve a math problem merely by looking at it. Wilfred was the Anglo-Catholic priest who remained an Anglican. Ronald was the Anglo-Catholic priest who converted to the Roman Catholic Church and became priest in it. A sister, Winifred Peck, wrote several detective stories Arrest the Bishop? is on Kindle and, from what this book said, the setting and the Bishop's unflappable, gracious wife, seem to be a picture of her father, step-mother and life in the Bishop's 'palace', where the chaplain's office was next to the butler's pantry.
I don't understand the crises of faith and conscience the younger brothers experienced and why they could not remain the sort of Anglicans their father was. I am not an Anglican nor a Roman Catholic. Bishop Knox was, I suppose, a "low-church evangelical". I think I understand him. They loved each other to the end, but Bishop Knox would not enter their churches, and he cut Ronald out of his will. Edmund and Dillwyn became unbelievers since university. When Dilly was on his deathbed, he said, "Ronnie's still kneeling in the passage bothering God about me." Whatever else was in this book, the family love and solidarity touched me. There is an honesty about them too. No sham. A bluntness but also a kindness. Dilly gave his medal to his fellow code-breakers because "They deserve it as much as I do." and none of them could be recognized by the people in power because their work was secret.

[Tony Lawrence]

Brilliant find in a charity shop in Portmadoc, to add to my PF (nee Knox) back catalogue. This is her first acclaimed book, before any fiction, about her famous father and uncles, of the title. She appears quietly, unnamed, as 'the niece'.

Firstly, I wanted to capture this great quote (p151) on joining the Oratory of the Good Shepherd, the author's Uncle Wilfred:

"For prayer, stillness is necessary, and this is difficult, because activity always seems more rewarding. Stillness, however, does not mean inactivity, but peace."

And again this keeps happening, a reference to Alan Turing, an acquaintance of [Uncle] Dilly’s at Bletchley Park, and a random story about buried silver and a pram! (p233)

This is as assured, erudite and atmospheric as I would expect from Fitzgerald. Not that her books are easy reads, they are challenging and immersive. but maybe that’s part of her appeal? This book, that launched her late non-fiction career, is a homage to her father ‘Eddie’ and his brothers Ronnie, Dilwyn & Wilfred. The brothers were incredibly high achievers, without being boastful and immediately recognisable (although a lot of their society acquaintances are), but also with human self-doubts about their careers, relationships and religious beliefs. What fascinating characters, both typical of a class of late-Victorian/Edwardian gentlemen, but also unique in their intelligence and contributions to literature, theology, Greek translation, cryptography, publishing etc. etc. Next, I probably need to hunt out Fitzgerald's biography to complete the picture!

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't pretend I understood all of the book - still unsure of what a "pudding-bag sleeve" is, for example - but enjoyed Fitzgerald's telling of these stories. A cryptographer reading "the secret traffic of the nation's rivals and ill-wishers", her characterization of the Knox ancestors as "a shrewd and so far unlikeable family", and the frequent samples of verse, songs, and snippets from diaries. Also liked Ronnie's observation that "Like the women in Homer, who wept not for Patroclus but for their own griefs, you regret the passing of your own life in the passing of a king."

[Lee Behlman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding and deeply touching group biography. Reading this while listening to Lytton Stachey’s Eminent Victorians on audiobook underlined for me how different their approaches are. Strachey is engaged in political and cultural critique. Fitzgerald’s sympathy for her reticent, very Englishly odd uncles and father results in an ethos of evocation, not critique, though there are hints of it around the edges of her narrative.

[Artie LeBlanc · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started off really enjoying this book - the sheer strangeness and effervescence of the brothers carried me along; but, by the time the narrative reached the war, it felt more plodding. I was overwhelmed by the theological detail, and frankly lost interst, abandoning it before I reached the half-way point.

[Leslie McCurdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb biography of four brothers, by the daughter of the eldest, "written with a novelist's insight into character," says the opening blurb.

[Gene · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Knox Brothers was a very enjoyable book about a tremendously interesting family of very gifted brothers whose adults lives spanned the first half of the 20th Century. Sons of a bishop in the Church of England, two brothers pursued lives of devotion to God via the priesthood (one Anglo-Catholic with an emphasis on social justice, the other Catholic with an emphasis on ministry to youth), while two others rejected the religious faith. The two non-believers ended up becoming the editor of Punch magazine and a phenomenal code-breaker for the British in both World Wars.

Being a member of a family with many brilliant brothers and brotherly affection not unlike that experienced in the Knox household, I felt drawn to the brothers and the experiences that drove them apart or bonded them together. The spiritual aspect of their development and lives is not overlooked, and I see that as one of the strengths of the book. Much can be found in each of the brothers' lives that is worthy of imitation, though all were portrayed honestly without character flaws being made light of or glossed over. I also saw how much impact the faith of just one or two members of the previous generations in their family had impacted so many others.

What made the quad-biography somewhat difficult was that it seemed to be written for a British audience acquainted with the practices of Oxford and Cambridge, the social practices of British nobility, and other things distinctly British. Not only did that sometimes leave me unclear at times at what the author was trying to communicate, so did an unfamiliarity with some things mentioned that may have been common a century ago but are a mystery to me. It is a good book that I believe will lead me to look for Evelyn Waugh's biography of the youngest brother, Ronald Knox.

[Carolyn Jacobson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was ultimately disappointed by this book, although it was interesting. I liked best the description of the family's early years. But it's unnerving to learn that there were two sisters who don't figure into Fitzgerald's account much at all. And as for the brothers, Fitzgerald tries to give them an even amount attention, which is kind of forced. She ends up not writing as much as I would have liked about Edmund and Dillwyn and then giving minute details about Wilfred and Ronald. She was also not particularly interested in how history has responded to the brothers, so she concludes just as the last brother dies, and doesn't look back. At times I felt like I was reading something an interested family member might have written about anyone--not necessarily someone noteworthy. She was also unfailingly positive about the brothers, whereas sometimes I thought she needed to be a bit harder edged. I still like the idea of the book a lot, and I'm glad I read it, but it wasn't amazing, the way I thought it would be. I feel like I've been duped all along the way with Fitzgerald. I read two of her novels because I'd been so intrigued by this biography, and I have been disappointed now by all three to some degree. Favorite part of the book: reading about how the Brits cracked the German code in WW II because they happened to know Schiller's poetry. Luckily, the code cracking office had been inexplicably filled with University Dons.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Novelist Penelope Fitzgerald's group biography of her father and his three brothers is a beautiful memorial. To love this book, one must be an Anglophile and a lover of eccentricity. In all of them, the latter was a sign of genius finding its way. Her father, Eddie, was editor of Punch and the oldest of the Knox brothers. Then came Dilly (Dillwyn) a classical scholar and one of the code breakers of World War I and II. Wilfred Knox was a teacher and an Anglo-Catholic whereas the youngest, and most famous, Ronald, was a Catholic priest (I hadn't known of the distinction). Each was brilliant and each was very much a unique individual. Though they each went their own way religiously (they were the sons of an evangelical Bishop), they never stopped loving each other though Wilfred was greatly pained by Ronald's conversion to Roman Catholicism. It was another world and one which I can't help but feel almost a nostalgia for (having never lived it and being otherwise so alien to their lives). As someone writes to Eddie, in a letter quoted in the last chapter, "What a world it is--but how lucky we are to remember what it was once like." Fitzgerald helps those of us who can't possibly remember think maybe we just do..

I just have to say that 30 pages in, I already love the book and the family. Her uncle Ronnie, at age 4, when asked what he liked to do replied, "I think all day, and at night I think about the past."

[Frank Paternoster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald is a writer of fiction that should be considered with the top writers of the 20th century, but I am afraid is underappreciated here in America. This slim book is a telling of the lives of her father and his three brothers. She not only illuminates the lives of Edmund, Dillwyn, Wilfred and Ronald Knox, but also their family origins. It is amazing to see the brilliance and diversity of one family, and their influence in 20th century Britain, and she does this all in a never dull less than 300 pages. This is biography as it should be written.

[Gina Rheault · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting family to surround your growing up! Set in the UK, The Knox Brother are the uncles of Penelope Fitzgerald. One of her uncles became an editor of Punch, another a cryptographer, and yet another a Catholic priest.

She tells the story of the Knox Brothers by chronicling passed down stories, and observations, giving this book a homespun family flavor.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Penelope Fitzgerald's novels, but this biography of her father and three uncles was too dry and too uninformative of why they were famous enough to justify a biography in the first place. Pass.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years, I have made a point to read anything I can find by Ronald Knox. This enjoyable biography helped me better understand Msgr. Knox as one member of a remarkable and charming family. Clearly the author inherited her uncle's wit and talent. Highly recommended.

[SueEllen · Rating 2 out of 5]

not my favorite of hers

[Elizabeth Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like E. Nesbit for grownups, so far...