James Bailey: Like a Cat Loves a Bird - the Nine Lives of Muriel Spark

Author Event with James Bailey

Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark

(9 April 26, Sceptre)

Thursday 4 June 2026

6-7.30pm

"This is a deeply stylish, astute and illuminating biography of a fascinating writer" Francesca Wade

"She was, if you believe what you read in the papers: a genius, a survivor, a bad mother, a fickle friend, a closeted lesbian, a tyrant, a loner, an eccentric, a recluse, a gossip, and an arch-manipulator. She would politely encourage you not to believe what you read in the papers."

Muriel Spark was one of literature's great shapeshifters. That mercurial quality is found in her strange, brilliant, cruel novels - with their plots featuring pensioners receiving telephone calls from Death, the devil going clubbing in Peckham and a fascist schoolmistress leading her coterie of girls astray - but it is also true of her as a person.

As sly, nimble and elegant as Spark's own work, Like a Cat Loves a Bird is a thrilling new perspective on a remarkable life and career that spanned much of the twentieth century. From her childhood in Edinburgh to her final years in Tuscany - via South Africa, London, New York and Rome - it traces a light-footed journey around the world and through her strange and magnificent bibliography. It tells an irresistible story of transformation, wit and fierce determination and makes a passionate case for this vital modern artist.

James Bailey is a writer and researcher from Manchester. He is a Doctor of Literature, and the author of Muriel Spark's Early Fiction (2021) and the co-editor of British Women Short Story Writers (2015). His day job involves working to support the development of other writers, as well as publishers, bookshops and literature festivals.

‘What an exciting piece of writing – like a Spark novel, the moment my eyes met the page I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop reading – it will be quite impossible for anyone to read this and not immediately feel the urgent need to read everything she wrote. A magnificent piece of work.’ Robin Ince

Tickets are free but need to be booked.

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