Book review: Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark, by Alan Taylor

It often happens that when someone who has been a friend, disciple or associate of an admired writer comes to write a memoir telling of their relationship, a note of sourness or resentment is struck. Roger Lewis’s admittedly very entertaining biography of Anthony Burgess was such a book, the biographer evidently eager to reveal that his one-time idol’s feet were made only of clay, and poor quality clay at that. Happily Alan Taylor’s memoir of his friendship with Muriel Spark is very different. He admired her as a writer, enjoyed her company, and liked her.