21 x 10.5 cm postcard of Dame Muriel Spark, (1918 - 2006) Writer by Alexander Moffat, from the National Galleries of Scotland Collection.
Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh to a Jewish Lithuanian father and an English Protestant mother. Educated at James Gillespie's School for Girls, she later immortalised one of her teachers, Christina Kay, in her most famous novel, 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'.
Spark began her writing career in London as editor of 'The Poetry Review', but is now best known for her 'seriously funny' novels in which the struggle between good and evil is centre stage, a theme she shares with earlier Scottish writers. In 1993, Spark was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in Tuscany in 2006, aged 88.
Alexander Moffat OBE DLitt RSA studied at Edinburgh Art College, where he was taught by William Gillies, Robin Philipson and James Cumming. He concentrated on portraiture, described as "Scottish realism", and was among the leading Scottish intellectuals of the 1960s.
