Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh in 1918. A poet, essayist, biographer and novelist, she won much international praise, including being twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Times placed her eighth in its list of the Fifty Greatest British Writers Since 1945. She died in Tuscany in 2006.Alan Taylor has contributed to numerous publications, including the TLS, The New Yorker and The Melbourne Age, and edited four acclaimed anthologies – The Assassin’s Cloak (2000), The Secret Annexe (2004), The Country Diaries(2009) and most recently, Glasgow: The Autobiography (2016).

'As I entered my teens, I developed a taste for more arch, snappy writing and discovered the joys of Muriel Spark. Wisdom and wit — ideal for an impressionable youth finding his way in the world'