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.Lucy Ellmann was born in Illinois in 1956. Her first book Sweet Desserts (1988), a semi-autobiographical account of two American girls in England, won the Guardian fiction prize. She has also written for the Guardian, the Independent, the Telegraph, the New York Times and other newspapers.