JUST a handful of tickets remain for tonight’s celebration in Edinburgh of the centenary of the birth of Dame Muriel Spark.
At a packed Usher Hall tonight there will be readings by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and the writers Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith among others.
Alan Taylor, author of Appointment in Arezzo, which is about his friendship with Edinburgh-born Spark, and co-host of the sell-out show, said: “The event this evening, on the eve of 100th anniversary of Muriel Spark’s birth, is a mark of the regard and affection with which she is held in the place where she was born and formed. It has been a long time coming.
“Much of Spark’s life was spent abroad and this led some of the more myopic members of the literary establishment to question how Scottish she was. She herself was unequivocal and was forever correcting those who described her as an English writer.
“In fact, she was quintessentially Scottish and, as her great novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, demonstrates, she understood what it meant to be a Scot in the early decades of the last century better than anyone else."
Taylor also expressed his hope that the event could inspire the commission of a statue in the city commemorating Spark.
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