The Year of Spark

By Alan Taylor

THIS time last year I was sitting in our new-acquired cottage in the Borders. It was bone-chillingly, mind-numbingly cold. None of the doors closed properly and the windows seemed to funnel wind rather than repel it. Such heating as there was did little to raise the temperature. As I typed my nose dripped like an icicle and my fingers stuck to the keyboard. Or at least that’s what it felt like. Our belongings, most of which are books, remained unpacked because in our haste to leave our previous home we had neglected to take the bookcases.

The piece I was writing was an introduction to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark’s sixth novel. This was not something I had planned to do. As series editor of Muriel’s collected novels, I had invited an eminent critic to write it but he had gone missing without leave. With the deadline fast approaching the publisher issued an ultimatum: in forty-eight hours, the introduction had to be with the printer in Malta. Did we have a Plan B? We did not. Thus it fell to me to step into the breach.

As I sat at my desk entombed by boxes, I thought of Muriel and how she would have reacted. Not only would she have coped with such a predicament but she would most likely have relished it. Adversity seemed to bring out the best in her. For instance, on the rare occasions when she got stuck writing a novel she would check in to a hospital in Rome where she knew she no-one could disturb her. The situation in which I found myself wouldn’t have fazed her at all.

The republication in hardback of her 22 novels – unprecedented in the annals of modern publishing – was the undoubted highlight of what Creative Scotland and the National Library of Scotland dubbed ‘Muriel Spark 100’. This was to mark the centenary of Muriel’s birth in 1918 and to give overdue attention and acclaim to the greatest novelist Scotland produced in the last century. Myriad events were organised to celebrate the occasion, including a wonderful exhibition at the National Library, academic symposia, screenings of movies inspired by her books, artistic responses to her work, a memorial concert in the Purcell Room in London, a BBC television documentary presented by Kirsty Wark and countless book festival appearances from New York to New Zealand by those who either knew Muriel or admired her.

As the author of Appointment in Arezzo, a memoir of my friendship with her, I have spent the last twelve months talking about her. No one would have found this more amusing than Muriel who was never too keen to appear in public. What she would have made of the hoopla is hard to say, except that she would surely have been delighted and honoured. She might also have felt it was deserved. Her home town of Edinburgh, for instance, has been slow to recognise the genius it inspired, belatedly naming after her a path through the Meadows, which she crossed every day on her way to school. Who knows, its panjandrums may even one day get round to commissioning a statue. But don’t count on it; our enlightened capital currently has more memorials to animals than women.

It was at the Usher Hall, however, where as a child Muriel was taken to concerts by her teacher, Miss Christina Kay – the prototype of Jean Brodie – that the ‘Sparkathon’ got underway. On the eve of Muriel’s birthday, 1 February, an audience of over two thousand gathered to hear writers and others read from Muriel’s work and enjoy an abridged version of her only play, Doctors of Philosophy, under the aegis of the Royal Lyceum Theatre. Among those who participated were Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon who read with élan from The Prime. But surely the highlight of an emotional night was the rediscovery by the Edinburgh International Book Festival of a recording of Muriel’s final appearance in Edinburgh in 2004 when she was 86. In an accent that had lost none of its native intonation, she read: “If only you small girls would listen to me I would make of you the crème de la crème.”

Over the course of the following twelve months few were the weeks when I did not find myself living out of a suitcase. There are apparently more than 350 book festivals in the UK and it felt like I attended most of them. With the disappearance of bookshops from the high street such festivals have increasingly become important as a means of connecting readers with books. Many of these jamborees do not have a high literary content and I sometimes wondered whether the Muriels of the future will receive invitations to them. Instead, their programmes are stocked with celebrities, superannuated politicians, moonlighting BBC personalities and rock and sports stars of yesteryear. Meanwhile serious writers – poets, playwrights, novelists, even critics – are conspicuous by their absence. Festival directors are apologetic but in a bind. Literary writers just don’t attract the crowds whereas even the most fleetingly famous in another sphere can be guaranteed to attract their devotees.

As I flitted from one festival to another I grew to appreciate creature comforts. In a venerable hotel in the Highlands I arrived to discover there was a problem with the heating. On being shown to my room I asked the receptionist if it was likely to be fixed soon. “I very much doubt it,” she said with the insouciance of a fiddler playing on the deck of the Titantic. She was proved right and I watched with cruel amusement as a foursome from Glasgow celebrating a significant birthday tried to warm their hands over tea lights. When they inquired if they might expect a refund they were told that this would not be possible but that they could count a discount should they make a return visit. That night I slept fully clothed.

Other hotels were remarkable for their inability to cook breakfast. How difficult can it be to poach an egg or grill a tomato? Pretty damn difficult if my experience is anything to go by. In another hotel, in New Zealand, I was holding forth on the subject of Muriel when I felt a dampness spread across my nether regions. The waitress, obviously beguiled by my spiel, was pouring cream not on to my pie but on to my lap. It was the kind of incident that Muriel would have savoured and saved for one of her novels which rejoice in human folly and foibles. At the Boswell Book Festival I was given a few minutes with Prince Charles and reminded him that Muriel had bought a racehorse from his grandmother. He was not surprised to learn that it was never seen in the winners' enclosure. In Florence, in October, I spoke at the British Institute whose director reminded me that Muriel had preceded me. He wanted her to give a lecture but she said she would only read from her then latest novel, Aiding and Abetting, which is concerned with the disappearance of Lord Lucan. By all accounts she gave a spellbinding performance.

Wherever I went I was always conscious of Muriel’s shade. A believer in ghosts, she may well have been tracking my every move and monitoring my every utterance. Often I was asked what she would have thought of Scottish independence or Brexit or the American president. All I could accurately say was that she was instinctively anti-nationalist and that it was highly likely she would have thought the UK’s departure from the EU was a terrible mistake. Like Miss Brodie, she regarded herself as a European. Who knows what she would have thought about Donald Trump but we do know what she thought about Richard Nixon because he was the inspiration for her satirical novel, The Abbess of Crewe. And always I was asked which of the books I’d recommend to anyone who had never read any Muriel Spark. This was like a mother being asked which of her children she wished she hadn’t had. Ultimately, eager to please, I’d say Loitering With Intent which its introducer, Joseph Kanon describes as “a valentine to the writing life”. But then aren’t all her novels that? You can judge for yourselves. Thanks to the Scottish Government there is now a set of them in every public library in the land.

Alan Taylor is the author of Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark and is series editor of Spark’s twenty-two novels published by Polygon.