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Sat 04 Apr 2007A cool, complacent, unconvincing voiceFiction:Few writers do voice better than Graham Swift, one of Britain's most consistently original writers. Voice has always been important to his fiction, and watching its emerging dominance over the course of what is a major literary career has proved interesting.It has been the progression of a device, which went from an effective element to an essential one in his 1996 Booker prize-winning Last Orders. With that novel, Swift, a novelist who has always asked questions but rarely presumes to offer answers, demonstrated his developing fascination with how people live. His earlier work, most specifically his finest book, Waterland (1983), and his most underrated book, Ever After (1992), both testify to his feel for history and the past; notions and ideas.