Penelope Mortimer was a British journalist, biographer and novelist.S he wrote two volumes of autobiography, About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography, covering her life until 1939, appeared in 1979 and won the Whitbread Prize, and About Time Too: 1940-78 in 1993. A third volume, Closing Time, is unpublished. She died from cancer, aged 81, in Kensington & Chelsea, London, England.