Dame Muriel Sarah Spark (née Camberg; 1 February 1918 – 13 April 2006)[1] was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist.

[2][3] Her father was Jewish, born in Edinburgh of Lithuanian immigrant parents, and her English mother had been raised Anglican.

In 1940 Muriel left Sidney and temporarily placed Robin in a convent school, as children were not permitted to travel during the war.

Spark maintained it was her intention for her family to set up a home in England, but Robin returned to Britain with his father later to be brought up by his maternal grandparents in Scotland.

[12] After living in New York City for some years, she moved to Rome, where she met artist and sculptor Penelope Jardine in 1968.

In the early 1970s, they settled in Tuscany, in the village of Oliveto, near to Civitella in Val di Chiana, of which in 2005 Spark was made an honorary citizen.

She was the subject of frequent rumours of lesbian relationships[13] from her time in New York onwards, although Spark and her friends denied their validity.

[14] Spark began writing seriously, under her married name, after World War II, beginning with poetry and literary criticism.

[16] In an interview with John Tusa on BBC Radio 4, she said of her conversion and its effect on her writing that she "was just a little worried, tentative.

Spark displayed originality of subject and tone, making extensive use of flashforwards and imagined conversations.

Spark used her archive to write her autobiography, "Curriculum Vitae", and after its publication in 1992 much of the material was deposited at National Library of Scotland.

Penelope Jardine holds publication approval rights, and the book was posthumously published in July 2009.

They had a falling out when Robin's Orthodox Judaism prompted him to petition for his late great-grandmother to be recognised as Jewish.