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Genius of Muriel Spark to be celebrated with major Gardens' sculpture

Exclusive: Writer to be first woman to have memorial in Princes Street Gardens

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Euan McGrory
Aug 19, 2025
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Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash

There is a beautiful symmetry to new plans to create a “significant” memorial to Dame Muriel Spark in Princes Street Gardens.

One of the great writer’s final public acts in her home city, which inspired some of her most memorable work, took place there. A huge admirer of Robert Louis Stevenson’s storytelling, she accepted an invitation, in 1989, to perform the official dedication of a memorial to Edinburgh’s “man of letters”, RLS. Still little-known, the simple, gravestone-like monument near the Ross Fountain, created by the celebrated sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay, is one of the Gardens’ subtle treasures.

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