Frances Wilson | Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark
Wed 22 Apr 2026 | 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Muriel Spark was – as her greatest creation Miss Jean Brodie would say – the crème de la crème of British post-war novelists. In Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, acclaimed biographer Frances Wilson offers a dazzling new portrait of this most elusive of writers. Drawing on rich archival material, Wilson focuses on Spark’s turbulent early years, a period marked by breakdown and brilliance, faith and deception, poverty and ambition.
Spark’s life, full of weird accidents, strange coincidences and apparently spooky events, reads uncannily like one of her own novels. Divorce, espionage, madness, blackmail, love affairs, revenge and religious conversion were not merely lived experiences but became the substance of her art. Join Frances Wilson to explore how Spark fashioned treachery, wit and moral daring into fiction of enduring power, and to uncover the making of one of the sharpest, most unsettling imaginations in modern literature. Unmissable.
Chaired by broadcaster Alex Clark.
Venue: Palmerston Room
Duration: 1 hour
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Author Biography
Frances Wilson is a critic, journalist and the author of six works of non-fiction, including The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography in 2012, Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas de Quincey, which was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2016, and Burning Man: The Ascent of D. H. Lawrence, which won the Plutarch Award in 2022 and was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize. She lives in North London.
Chair Biography
Alex Clark is a broadcaster and journalist, who writes for many publications including the Guardian, the Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is a co-host on the Graham Norton Book Club for Audible and hosts the TLS podcast. She is a professional chairperson and appears all over the UK at Cheltenham, Hay and the Southbank Centre. Alex is a festival Honorary Patron.
