Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh in 1918. A poet, essayist, biographer and novelist, she won much international praise, including being twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Times placed her eighth in its list of the Fifty Greatest British Writers Since 1945. She died in Tuscany in 2006.James Wood was born in Durham in 1965. He was the chief literary critic at the Guardian from 1992 to 1995, and a senior editor at The New Republic from 1995 to 2007. He is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and a staff writer and book critic at The New Yorker magazine. His books include the novel, The Book of God, and How Fiction Works.