Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh in 1918. A poet, essayist, biographer and novelist, she won much international praise, including being twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Times placed her eighth in its list of the Fifty Greatest British Writers Since 1945. She died in Tuscany in 2006.Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968 and read English at the University of Strathclyde. His first book, The Missing (1995), was shortlisted for the Esquire Award, the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award, and the McVities Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year award. He is a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and Granta magazine.