More puns: prepare for Sparks to fly when Martin Stannard’s controversial biography of the late Dame Muriel of that ilk appears in May. Spark, who died in 2006, vetoed Stannard’s book having co-operated fully in its preparation. Over the years, JC readers have been able to read quite a lot of the abrasive side of the celebrated author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It is well-known that the former Muriel Camberg became a Roman Catholic, but what was she before that? According to her artist son Robin, an upstanding member of Edinburgh’s Jewish community, his mother was Jewish (and he was given a barmitzvah by his parents), something which she so vehemently denied that mother and son had the most bitter falling out, with her refusing to speak to him in her late years.