Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark

"Yes, exactly. One of the things we, as judges, enjoyed about both of the literary biographies on the shortlist is that we weren’t carpet-bombed with facts about someone’s life from cradle to grave. Neither was one of those big, maximalist American literary biographies where you get everything, including the laundry lists and which restaurant they were eating at on a certain date. They’ve been much more picky about what they’re going to tell you and created these wonderful stories about these characters. Frances Wilson, like Richard Holmes, is one of those people where you wonder, ‘Why hasn’t she won this prize before?’ She’s very distinguished. As you say, the book focuses on the younger Muriel Spark. It’s actually very funny in places. Muriel Spark ran the Poetry Society for a while after the war, and the character sketches of the male poets of that time—men in ill-fitting corduroys thinking they could dominate or seduce this very vivacious, attractive woman… At every stage, she has to fight her way through against these slightly lechy, ridiculous men. Then there’s her service during the war at Bletchley Park. Frances Wilson uses that wartime experience of helping crack German messages to talk about Muriel Spark’s love of puzzles, of codes, of secrecy. When you go back and read her novels, you do see bits of trickery and things withheld. Blackmail appears in them a lot. Of the six books on the shortlist, this is probably the funniest. Frances Wilson is a very witty writer, and Muriel Spark had a very offbeat sense of humor. So there are bits that are terribly amusing. It’s been a fascinating process. If I’d just done the shortlist on my own with no discussion, there are a couple of other books that would definitely have been on there. But the wonderful thing about chatting with the other judges is that it really tests what you actually think about a book. The other judges were tip-top. The winner of the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction will be announced on Tuesday, November 4."