The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Tapa dura

Miss Jean Brodie is a rare breed of teacher, passionate, independent-minded and romantically inspired, with not the slightest care for convention. Small surprise then that she soon garners a devoted following of six young girls, who will become known as the Brodie set. But in time Brodie is also revealed to be an individual with an intense desire to control and mould her girls into mini Brodies. Beneath the facade of this self-possessed woman lie dark truths about both her personality - not least a desire to initiate her girls into the adult world of sex - and a keen interest in Fascism.

Dame Muriel Spark (1918-2006) was born and educated in Edinburgh, before spending a number of years in central Africa. Although she's probably best known for her novels, she was also a prolific and highly successful writer in other mediums too, producing a multitude of plays, poetry collections and short stories. Her immersion in the literary world even extended to include a period as the editor of Poetry Review and a stint working collaboratively on several biographies. Such was the extent of her literary achievements, and the admiration of her peers, that she was honoured with a great many prizes and doctorates during her lifetime. Her obituary in the Telegraph remembered her as 'one of the most elegant and incisive of British novelists, famous for her astringent, vigorous prose and for the sinister and disorientating quality of her plots.'