The Enigma of Muriel Spark (In person)
From The Ballad of Peckham Rye to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to A Far Cry from Kensington, former London Library member, Muriel Spark, is responsible for some of the best known and most beloved works in English literature. But the author was known to be something of a puzzle and the same has been said of her books. She dealt in word games, tricks and ciphers; her life was composed of weird accidents, strange coincidences and spooky events. Evelyn Waugh thought she was a saint, Bernard Levin said she was a witch and she described herself as 'Muriel the Marvel with her X-ray eyes'.
In her new biography, Electric Spark, award-winning author Frances Wilson explores a wealth of new archival materials and follows the clues, riddles and instructions that Spark planted for posterity in her biographies, fiction, autobiography and letters. Focusing on Spark’s early years, Wilson reveals a writer in pursuit of her literary ambitions, all the while experiencing a life fraught with everything from divorce, madness, murder, espionage, poverty, skulduggery, blackmail, love affairs, revenge and a major religious conversion, all of which, of course, was transmuted into Spark’s extraordinary literary output.
In conversation with author and literary critic Chris Power, Wilson discusses the enigma that was Muriel Spark.
Frances Wilson is a critic, journalist and the author of six works of non-fiction, including The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography in 2012, Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas de Quincey, which was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2016, and Burning Man: The Ascent of D. H. Lawrence, which won the Plutarch Award in 2022 and was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize.
Chris Power is the author of a novel, A Lonely Man and a short story collection, Mothers, which was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. His fiction has appeared in Granta, the Stinging Fly and the Dublin Review and his criticism has appeared in newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, The Times, the FT, the New York Times and the London Review of Books. He was a regular presenter of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Open Book’ from 2020 to 2024 and he is a judge for this year’s Booker Prize.
Books by both speakers will be available to buy at the event and online from our partner bookshop Hatchards.
This event will take place in person at The London Library. Doors (and the bar) will open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start.
Please see our Event Access Guidelines before you arrive.
London Library events are subject to Terms & Conditions
