Muriel Spark

Born Bruntsfield 1918. Attended James Gillespie School for Girls. Here she won a poetry competition in honour of Scott’s bi-centenary.

She lived in South Africa / Rhodesia from 1938-44. On returning home her war effort was to invent new items to discredit the enemy. After the War she wrote biographieson the Brontes, Mary Shelley and Cardinal Newman.

In 1951 she won the Observer Short Story Prize for a story about a Seraph (angel) on the Zambesi. Later she won the Italia Prize. This was followed by the James Tait Black Memorial Prize by Edinburgh University for her novel “Mandelbaum Gate” in 1965. She was awarded the OBE in 1967 and Dame of the British Empire in 1993.

Recognition from abroad followed - she was elected an honorary member of American Academy of Arts and letters in 1978, Commandeur of the French “Ordre des Artes et des Lettres” in 1996 and the David Cohen British Literature Prize for a lifetime’s achievement in writing in 1997. She was awarded a doctorate of Oxford University in 1999. She converted to Catholicism in 1954.

Her best known book is“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” modelled loosely on her teacher at Gillespie’s - Miss Christine Kay.

Her penultimate novel was published in 2000. “Aiding and Abetting” is based on the disappearance of Lord Lucan. It was serialised on the Radio as soon as it was published. The final one. “The Finishing School ”was published in 2005. She died in 2006.

She described Edinburgh as “Saturine Heart of Midlothian, never mine.” (Edin Portraits)

Source - Edinburgh Portraits by Michael Turnbull

link to Short biography and to Guardian Obituary