David Pryce-Jones

Loitering with Intent

Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark

By

Polygon 176pp £12.99 order from our bookshop

Alan Taylor, an experienced journalist, one day interviewed Muriel Spark in a hotel near Arezzo and became an immediate friend of hers. The same thing happened to me, with the difference that Taylor flew in from Scotland and I drove over from Florence. Oliveto is a picturesque Tuscan hilltop town not far from Arezzo, and a dusty track snaked away through olive orchards to a rather ramshackle casa colonica with a large BMW on the grass in front of it. The house belonged to Penelope (Penny, normally) Jardine and the car to Muriel.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'One of the reasons for its longevity is that it has virtually nothing to say about science and technology at all,… ,
    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    • Thirty-two years ago this month, we published Muriel Spark's short story, 'A Playhouse Called Remarkable' Read it… ,
    • Time travel, bicycles and white horses populate @WomackPhilip's roundup of children's books by @marcussedgwick,… ,
    Follow Us