Character, created

HOW quickly Sylvia’s life had changed! At New Year, she’d wished that the next 12 months would mean better health for her grandmother, a new washing machine for her mother and, if at all possible, a p

Ihadn’t heard from Roy Biddle in nearly thirty years when he called my home number. This was 1991, and an October day when brown, slippery leaves coated the pavement outside our west London house. Roy

IT was a fine, windy day in September, and Rosalind Aston had an odd feeling that she was in love. The emotion was new, and she could not be sure, but she luxuriated in it as she walked towards the ha

EVERY time I smell the sweet scent of September air, I am transported back to Alderley Cottage. I am walking up the garden path strewn with grass and twigs towards a faded blue painted door with a bro

Muriel Spark’s irrepressible creative drive

A short while after we married, Tom and I made the decision to leave behind our hectic London lives and relocate to the tranquillity of rural living. We wanted a slower pace of life where the countrys