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"One's prime is elusive ..."

Muriel Spark is probably still best known for the novel based on her own schooling in Edinburgh in the 1930's, 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'. But she published over twenty other novels, as well as essays and poems - she always thought of herself as a poet first - and, though 'Scottish by formation', she left Scotland for 'adventures' in what used to be Rhodesia, London, New York and Rome, before finally settling into a kind of 'spiritual exile' for the last thirty years of her life in Arezzo, Tuscany.

But her work and her ideas about what a writer is still resonate, as can be heard in recordings with her from the early 1970s onwards and through the observations of the writers Ian Rankin and Zoe Strachan, Colin McIlroy of the National Library of Scotland and Muriel Spark's friend and author of 'Appointment in Arezzo', Alan Taylor.
With extracts from Spark's writing read by Kate Arneil.

"Everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease." (Loitering With Intent)

Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio Three

First broadcast 12th June 2022