Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr James Bailey chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about *Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark.*  Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: - Why James structures Spark’s life as nine partial portraits rather than a unified chronological narrative. - How Muriel Spark’s changing appearance during sittings for Sandy Moffat’s portrait provides the biography’s perfect opening scene. - Why James preserves Spark’s contradictions and asks open-ended questions instead of pretending to solve her. - How extensive archival research allows James to reconstruct vivid scenes without crossing the border into fiction. - The challenge of weaving literary criticism and human story together so that Spark’s life and novels illuminate each other. - Why cats, cocktails, hairdresser’s receipts, contaminated pens and green gowns are far from trivial biographical details. - How James adopts a witty, nimble style capable of accommodating the darkness, eccentricity and comedy of Spark’s life. - Why the biography ends not with Spark’s death but with her imaginative return as a meddling authorial ghost.