Curriculum Vitae, the autobiography of the great 20th century novelist and poet Muriel Spark, will feature on next week's A Good Read on BBC Radio 4. The programme will be broadcast at 4:30pm on Tuesday, and will be available online in perpetuity.

Harriett Gilbert and her guests will discuss their three book recommendations: Constance Briscoe, writer and part-time judge, champions Knowledge of Angels by Jill Paton-Walsh; science writer Angela Seini chooses Foundation by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov; and Harriett's own choice is Muriel Spark's autobiography.

To celebrate, Carcanet are currently offering a 20% discount on both our Muriel Spark titles, Curriculum Vitae and All the Poems, when purchased from our online shop.

Muriel Spark in the autobiography traces how one of the great modern writers in English emerged. Beginning with luminous evocations of a 1920s childhood in Edinburgh and memories of school, taught by the original Miss Jean Brodie, Spark recalls her formative years, up to the publication of her first novel in 1957. ‘In order to write about life as I intended to do, I felt I had first to live,’ Spark says. In her account of her unhappy marriage in colonial Africa, her return to wartime London on a troop ship, working at the Foreign Office as one of the ‘girls of slender means’, editing Poetry Review and her conversion to Catholicism, Muriel Spark outlines the life that provided material for some of the best-loved novels of the twentieth century.

'Cast in the dye of Edinburgh’s caustic morality, Ms Spark emerges as one of her own best characters.'
Clare Boylan, Irish Times

Photograph of Muriel Spark: Copyright Jerry Bauer.