Any aspiring sexagenarian writer who assumes that literary success will be hard to find should take comfort from the career of Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000). The reserved and retiring subject of Michael Alexander’s nicely judged tribute (24 October) published her first book in her sixtieth year, brought out her first novel at 62, and was thought by most of the book-world eminences assembled to praise her (Hermione Lee, Julian Barnes and Fiona MacCarthy) to have kept her best work for her early eighties.Past Perfect began with a clip or two of  Fitzgerald herself, talking in a soft, confiding, reluctant little voice that contrived, all the same, to hint at an inner steeliness. Certainly the circumstances of her early life can only have encouraged a sense of fortitude. The blue