Summary
As two adaptations of her novels take to the Edinburgh stage, Muriel Spark's biographer tells Chitra Ramaswamy why the writer's native city was pivotal to her artistic exile and the wry, stoic image she presented to the world
IN APRIL 1962, Muriel Spark briefly returned to Edinburgh. She was 44 and on the brink of becoming a major literary star. All the glamorous parties and artistic potential of New York lay before her. She had written seven novels, among them The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, completed in just four weeks. Now her father was dying in the Royal Infirmary.See the full content of this document
Extract
Hidden Spark
While her mother, brother and son were together in Bruntsfield, in the same house in which Spark grew up, she was alone in the North British Hotel. Propped up at the window so she could look out at the castle, Arthur's Seat, and Princes Street Gardens, she felt "an inpouring of love" for her native city. "It was Edinburgh that bred within me the condition of exiledom," she wrote.
It's a telling snapshot of Spark midway through her life: al...See the full content of this document
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