Edinburgh primed to honour life of author Muriel Spark

Published on Monday 17 April 2006 12:47

A PERMANENT memorial to honour Dame Muriel Spark is being considered by city officials.

The Capital's culture leader, Councillor Ricky Henderson revealed the plans today as he paid tribute to the woman considered Scotland's greatest modern novelist.

Edinburgh-born Dame Muriel wrote more than 20 novels, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie which was made into an Oscar-winning film starring Maggie Smith, pictured below right in the title role. It is a story of rebellion and betrayal set in a respectable Edinburgh girls school in the 1930s.

Jean Brodie is an eccentric and egotistical teacher who attempts to mould and influence the lives of the impressionable 16-year-olds.

Dame Muriel, 88, had lived in Italy since the late 1960s and died in hospital in Florence on Thursday.

Cllr Henderson said officials would now discuss how the city should honour her.

He added: "Although she hasn't lived in Edinburgh for many years, this is the passing of a significant figure in Edinburgh's history."

Cllr Henderson said he met Dame Muriel in 2004 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival where she was the focus of a "meet the author" event.

"I met her briefly and she seemed very nice and seemed to be enjoying being back to Edinburgh," he said. "There were certainly a lot of people very keen to meet her and attend the events she was going to be at. It caused a lot of interest."

He also said her most famous novel had depicted a vivid and unforgettable image of the Capital both at home and abroad.

He added: "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is so quintessentially Edinburgh and it's a reflection of Edinburgh that sticks in the mind. It shows an image of Edinburgh that people recognise."

The news of Dame Muriel's death was announced by Massimiliano Dindalini, the mayor of the Tuscan village of Civitella della Chiana, on Saturday.

Edinburgh's education leader, Ewan Aitken, said The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was still widely studied in schools and he believes its messages are still relevant to modern Scots culture.

He also suggested that a children's creative writing prize could be a fitting way of honouring Dame Muriel and her lasting legacy to Edinburgh.

Councillor Aitken added: "I think her work has made the city proud of itself. The city is also proud to have her as it is when one of your own has made their name in the creative arts.

"She is also the reason why the city has the literary tradition that it has now - she was a trailblazer for that.

"Writers like Iain Banks and Ian Rankin, they are all writing about Edinburgh life using Edinburgh as a setting for their novels and Muriel Spark began that."

Dame Muriel's first novel was The Comforters, published in 1957. Others included The Ballad Of Peckham Rye, The Girls Of Slender Means and Reality And Dreams.

She also published biographies of the authors Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte, and wrote radio plays, short stories, and children's books.

Made a Dame in 1993, she won a clutch of literary awards and was made a Doctor of Letters by St Andrews University in 1998.

In 1997 she received the prestigious David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded by top writers including novelist Ben Okri and poet Andrew Motion.

After a short time living in Rhodesia, she returned to London in 1944 and worked in intelligence for the Foreign Office before entering the literary world as a publisher's copy-editor, poet and literary critic.

In Italy, she lived first in Rome then in a converted 13th-century church in Tuscany with her friend of many years, painter and sculptor Penelope Jardine.

Gail Wylie, chairwoman of the city-based Muriel Spark Society, said: "She was delightful. She was taken aback that a society like ours would want to exist on her behalf, but she was very appreciative of it. She kept in touch with us happily."