"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions," begins The Girls of Slender Means, Dame Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-w

“A perfect book”—and basis for the Maggie Smith film—about a teacher who makes a lasting impression on her female students in the years before World War

Spark’s mind-bogglingly stunning 1957 debut With easy, sunny eeriness, Spark lights up the darkest things: blackmail, a drowning, nervous breakdowns, a ring o

January Marlow, a heroine with a Catholic outlook of the most unsentimental stripe, is one of three survivors out of twenty-nine souls when her plane crashes, b

Where does art start or reality end? Happily loitering about London, c. 1949, with the intent of gathering material for her writing, Fleur Talbot finds a job �