The Essay

Muriel Spark worked as a black propagandist during the war. Janice Galloway discusses two novels influenced by that work, The Comforters, and The Hothouse by the East River. Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She may be most famous for "The Prime of Jean Brodie" but she wrote more than 20 novels, plus poems and plays. She is a writer of many facets, all of them glittering, and is now recognised as the most important Scottish writer of the 20th century. In this series, five Scottish women writers give five very different takes on the novels and life of Mrs Spark.

Muriel Spark is best known for her witty novels but she began as a poet, and her gravestone describes her as "poeta." Poet Kate Clanchy discusses Muriel Spark - poet. Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She may be most famous for "The Prime of Jean Brodie" but she wrote more than 20 novels, plus poems and plays. She is a writer of many facets, all of them glittering, and is now recognised as the most important Scottish writer of the 20th century. In this series, five Scottish women writers give five very different takes on the novels and life of Mrs Spark.

Ali Smith presents the first in a series of essays from five Scottish women writers on Muriel Spark. Muriel Spark, was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She may be most famous for "The Prime of Jean Brodie" but she wrote more than 20 novels, plus poems and plays. She is a writer of many facets, all of them glittering, and is now recognised as the most important Scottish writer of the 20th century. In this series, five Scottish women writers give five very different takes on the novels and life of Mrs Spark.

Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:Lavinia Greenlaw is on the road in 'intense darkness'. She's visualising what it's like to walk along it and drive along it too. What insights and treasures are revealed ahead?Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:Rachel Cooke considers the way people eat, what it says about them that is good and bad and amusing. Yet her starting line is unnerving - "the optics of eating are inherently violent." How so?Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:Every year Nicholas Shakespeare visits the River Hodder in Lancashire. The aim is to catch sea-trout. But to catch sea-trout you have to understand them, and to understand them you have to read their river - expertly.Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:Lauren Elkin reckons that the way people walk, their gait, is a signifier. It also tells us something about ourselves as we watch people file past us, the quick and the slow. And it makes her think of George Sand strolling Paris.Producer Duncan Minshull

Five writers consider the art of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:Art historian James Fox drew a yellow disc and put a face on it, he was very young at the time. Since then he has been beguiled by the star that gives our planet light and warmth. And, as he says, looking up to the sky, "there is much that is god-like about it." Producer Duncan Minshull.

The poet Fiona Hamilton contrasts the different states of clay before and after it's baked hard. The satisfying tactile quality of clay squished in the hand, compared to the dry ordinariness of a brick. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about how rock, place and landscapes affect us. Mud bricks are as old as civilisation, and have been used throughout the world, but in England they underpinned the Industrial Revolution, enabling the rapid, cheap construction of mills, factories, terraced housing and the bridges and viaducts of an expanding rail network. Whilst bricks are mundane and ubiquitous, they derive from the deposits left across large parts of England after the last Ice Age, and so are surely the youngest 'rock' of all.Producer: Mark Smalley

The artist and archaeologist Rose Ferraby gets to grips with something that is always around us, but which we almost never stop to consider: gypsum, the chief constituent of the plaster on the walls around us. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about how rock, place and landscape affects us. Gypsum's use dates back to at least the ancient pyramids of Egypt. Rose explains how gypsum, being highly soluble, is responsible for the notorious sinkholes around the city of Ripon, frequently causing subsidence and damage to homes. She also considers alabaster, a soft, luminous stone composed of gypsum, and which was used to stunning effect for medieval memorials and sometimes even in place of stained glass in windows. Among the other Cornerstones essays this week, the writer Alan Garner takes flint, the stone that has enabled human civilisation, and Esther Woolfson contrasts Aberdeen's granite solidity with the decline of the North Sea oil and gas industry, on which its economy has relied for the last 40 years. Producer: Mark SmalleyImage: Courtesy of the artist Rose Ferraby