iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I’m a big fan of this photo of Madonna looking like a visiting lecturer who will absolutely not give you an extension on your modernist poetry essay just because you chipped your tooth on a Snickers bar.

Madonna, seated at a desk in front of a typewriter and a stack of books. Madonna is wearing trousers and a white shirt.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Read my review of THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT here: www.thetimes.com/culture/book... Or below, if you can squint:

Word count of review exceeds limit for alt text box. If you’d like the text from my review. Please message me and I’ll send it.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I'm in The Times again this weekend! I reviewed Chloe Aridjis's Booker-longlisted THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT, a book about loss, connection, and an alsatian being a right bloody nuisance. Link to read in the next post… 🐕‍🦺

A photo of me, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. I’m holding a copy of The Times, which features my review of the Chloe Aridjis novel.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Rereading: The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark

Word count of article exceeds limit of the text box. Please get in touch if you’d like me to send you a copy of the text.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I’m in The Times today! I've written about Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat, obeying your own 'queer dictatorial sense’, and scaring yourself to death while writing. Scarier still, I've just taken off my cap to find I’ve been left with a hairstyle reminiscent of Dido in her early-00s heyday.

Me, holding a copy of The Times, featuring an article with the headline ‘Rereading: The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark’. My hair is flicking out to the side.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

VAR (Virulent Authorial Ruthlessness)

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Ticket sales have nudged up a fraction, which is great. I’d really love for next week to go ahead, so do snap up a ticket if you’re dithering. I do a pretty decent signature, too, if you like that sort of thing… www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/waterstone...

A signed copy of Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark. Next to my signature is a doodle of a cat, alongside a cat-shaped badge which has ‘Muriel Spark Fan Club’ on it.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Thanks for boosting this! When I first posted it, we’d sold a grand total of 5 tickets. I’m hoping that’s climbed since… Anyway, here’s a picture of Spark at her book launch for Memento Mori in 1959. I promise to recreate this pose if my event goes ahead.

Muriel Spark, photographed beside a table display of copies of Memento Mori

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Hello, I’ve an event for my Muriel Spark biography next Weds (15th) at Waterstones Liverpool. We’ve sold barely any tickets, however, and it might be cancelled as a result. Please get a ticket if you’re nearby - it’ll be a lot of fun, and I’ll bring badges! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/waterstone...

A picture of me, accompanied by the text: JAMES BAILEY
IN CONVERSATION WITH JESS WHITE AT WATERSTONES LIVERPOOL
WEDNESDAY 15 JULY 6.30PM
The Nine Lives of Muriel Spork

5 cat-shaped badges, with text reading Muriel Spark Fan Club, pinned to a shirt

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Here I am at my most debonair (unshowered and surrounded by curtain hooks and puncture repair kits), holding a copy of the Sunday Times' Best Books of the Summer list, which includes my ‘witty, stylish' LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK! 🐈‍⬛💘🐦‍⬛

Photo of me, holding a copy of The Sunday Times in a newsagent

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Ah, how funny - I did the very same thing a few months back. Rather underwhelming! (I did enjoy visiting Muriel Spark Walk, however!)

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Here’s something - LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK has been chosen as one of The Times’ best books to read this summer. So that’s nice, isn’t it!

The best books to read this summer
Novels, memoirs and history, paperbacks and hardbacks — plus something for the children. Here's our guide to this summer's finest reads. Use the save button to create your own reading list

Muriel Spark is unusual among modern writers in having had two recent (and first-class) biographies about her. Last year was Frances Wilson's excellent Electric Spark, which focused on her early life and career (it's particularly strong on the awful, groping beta-talents she endured running the Poetry Society). James Bailey's book covers her whole life, or rather nine lives. She was a shape-shifting, slippery character, a woman of many parts (a wartime black propagandist, a high-spending grande dame in Rome, a poverty-stricken single mother, a religious convert). A witty, stylish read that does justice to one of British fiction's most original talents.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

An extract from the book was published on the Lit Hub website last week, and things have gone slightly bonkers on Instagram. Lots of twenty- and thirty-something women sharing this particular quote in their stories and declaring themselves “intellectual monsters” 💜 lithub.com/an-intellect...

‘I have a calling. Writing is a thing I have to do. Not many men will suffer for that and people do come before books, so it's best not to have people in your life—I'm willing to subordinate an enormous amount for my work. They say sacrifice, but sacrifice for a pleasure makes it more pleasurable. If you took away the writer from me, I believe I would not exist at all.’

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

And then the big one: on Wednesday 26th, I’ll be chatting all things LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK with The Scotsman’s Susan Mansfield. There’ll be anecdotes! There’ll be gossip! There’ll be cat pin badges (because of course)! www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/james...

Pin-badges in the shape of a cat, with the words ‘Muriel Spark Fan Club’ on them

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

On Tues 25th August, I’ll be unravelling Spark’s terrifying ‘whydunnit’, THE DRIVER’S SEAT, as part of the Close Read series. Join me for a trawl through Spark’s notes and letters, as we piece together how she wrote the book she called her ‘best… and creepiest’. www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/close...

A note from Muriel Spark’s archive, titled ‘Motifs’. Motifs mentioned include: ‘pinewood’; ‘laughs when alone’; ‘material of dress - doesn’t stain’

An owl paperweight is on top of the note.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Big news! Now that LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK is out in the world, I’ll be doing two events at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival. Tickets are on sale now - come along if you can! www.edbookfest.co.uk/events?eibf_...

A photo of me standing by a sign for MURIEL SPARK WALK in Edinburgh

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

The book is now out all over the place - go and get a copy, in time for summer! Look chic holding it in a hotel lobby! Read it in a caravan, maybe! Get sun cream and Cornetto all over the cover!

A round wooden table, on which three copies of Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark are arranged

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Argh, so pleased that LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK has been selected as one of the Guardian's best books to read this summer. And recommended by William Boyd, no less!

James Bailey's Like a Cat Loves a Bird:
The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark is both remarkably shrewd and surprisingly amusing
WILLIAM BOYD

Cover of Guardian’s Books section. Issue is titled ‘Adventures in summer reading’: ‘From dynamite debuts to must read memoirs and magical children's fiction, here's our selection of the best books to dip into this summer. Plus leading authors share their favourites’

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Just back from the Portico Library, where Professor Andrew Biswell discussed Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy, Stockport, California, and of course David Hockney 💛

Professor Andrew Biswell, next to a photograph of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy

Professor Andrew Biswell, next to an image of David Hockney’s painting of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

DAVID HOCKNEY We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961)

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Go on, treat yourselves… 🐈‍⬛

A round wooden table, upon which three copies of Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lived of Muriel Spark are displayed

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

If you need further persuasion that LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK is the book for you, here’s an extract from a review which not only calls me a ‘young author’ (!) but likens its weight to that of a small chicken Full thing here: openlettersreview.com/posts/like-a...

Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark, comes at the reader slightly aslant, stealthy in its insights, lightweight in page-count, playfully acerbic, overly fond of cats. It's a smart, bantam weight (100 pages shorter than the next-shortest Spark biography, although still 100 pages longer than Spark's own baffling memoir, Curriculum Vitae), savagely assessing, and ultimately memorable; in other words, young author James Bailey has written very first truly Sparkean biography of Muriel Spark.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Oh hi there! Just me, casually appearing from a behind a big stack of US editions of LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK, because the book's out in America today! A huge thank you to @princetonupress.bsky.social 🐈‍⬛ Buy it here! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Me, standing behind a large stack of copies of Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark. The book has a red cover and pink spine, and features a photograph of Muriel Spark holding a black cat.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

To mark Grace Jones’s 78th birthday, please enjoy her insisting that ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’ is simply a pleasant song about the joys of manoeuvring a long, well-waxed limousine into a very tight space, and ‘shame on you’ if you think otherwise! 🚘

Later I would mature more and tell the truth about how I was feel. ing, but when I wrote that, I was still hiding away from what I really felt. There was nothing personal about it; it wasn't about anyone. It was a way of having fun with some words that suited a track that sounded like you were having fun. So we have a car, and it's long, because it's a limousine, speeding down a Manhattan avenue, all the lights on green, through the steam pouring into the night, and you want to keep it clean, so you wax it and rub it, giving it a shine, and it's hard to park, because we're in the city, and it's so big, so you have to squeeze it into tight spaces, between certain obstacles, and nudge up against the car in front of you or behind you or both. You make it fit, and it is such a great feeling. Obviously, this could sound like you were talking about something else. If you wanted, you could imagine that I am not singing about a car at all. But that's up to you. If you think the song is not about parking a car, shame on you.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Hello, some book news! On 15th July, I’ll be at Waterstones Liverpool, talking all about LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK with the one and only @jesswhite.bsky.social - come along if you’re nearby! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/waterstone...

Picture of Muriel Spark in a graveyard, accompanied by the text: Sometimes, I like to go to Waterstones Liverpool to plug my book

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

This is where I not-at-all-shamelessly tell you both about my book…

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

I suppose I’d be prepared to settle for either of these instead:

Billboard for Joni Mitchell’s album, Hejira

Billboard for Joni Mitchell’s live album, Miles of Aisles

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

How much effort, do you think, would it take to retrieve this 1971 Joni Mitchell billboard and have it fitted to the roof of my house? Interviewer: we meant do you have any questions about the job.

Billboard for Joni Mitchell’s album, Blue

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Do try to get your paws on a copy of LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD if you can. It’s out as an audiobook, too! Other events coming up include: • @urmstonbooks.bsky.social (12th May) • @serenitybookshop.bsky.social (22nd May) • Books on the Walls in Chester (4th June) • @junobooks.bsky.social (10th June)

3 copies of Like a Cat Loves a Bird on a round wooden table

Ad for the audiobook of Like a Cat Loves a Bird, featuring a photo of the voice actor, Harley Viveash

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

And last but not least, Manchester! Thanks, @blackwellsmcr.bsky.social, for holding a launch, and to @jennashworth.bsky.social for chatting to me. Lots of friends and family attended - including my mum!

Me and Jenn Ashworth: I’m holding a copy of my book and smiling

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

London, too! Thank you, @hatchards.bsky.social, for an amazing sold-out (despite a tube strike!) launch with @sophiehaydock.bsky.social Thanks, too, to @qpbooks.bsky.social, @foylesforbooks.bsky.social and @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk and various Waterstoneses for letting me sign some copies.

Me signing copies at Gower St Waterstones

The audience at the Hatchards launch, who are all applauding which is nice

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

And here I am signing copies of my book in various bookshops around Edinburgh - a huge thank you to @edinburghbookshop.bsky.social, @lighthousebks.bsky.social, @argonautbooks.bsky.social, Blackwell’s, Topping & Co, @portybooks.bsky.social and @goldenharebooks.bsky.social for making me so welcome

Signing, seated at a table, at Blackwell’s in Edinburgh

Holding my book with two of the staff at Portobello Bookshop

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK has been out for a month, and it’s been a hoot and a half. Some fun photos to follow, but I had to start with the best of all - my own window display at @edinburghbookshop.bsky.social!

Me, dressed in a blue jacket and green cap, posing in front of the window of The Edinburgh Bookshop. Copies of my book are in the window, which is decorated with the title of my book, Like a Cat Loves a Bird.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Had a lovely chat about LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK on BBC Radio Scotland’s Arts Mix. Listen here! 🐈‍⬛ www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Me, behind a microphone in the BBC Radio Scotland studio. I’m holding a copy of my book, Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

YouTube recommended I watch this, for some reason, and for a brief moment I thought Dick & Dom were in the Criterion Closet

YouTube clip called ‘Dick & Dom - The Best of Bogies’, showing the pair in a library

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I’m once again thinking about how Barbra Streisand saw fit to install an entire DICKENSIAN STREET, including several fully-staffed ‘shops’, in the basement of her house, to show off her favourite antiques.

Shop with a sign saying ‘sweet shop’, which is part of a little street in Barbra Streisand’s basement

Antique shop in Barbra Streisand’s basement

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Thanks for sharing! And a reminder to anyone who enjoys the guide that my book, LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK, is out right now! I’m also launching the book at Topping & Co. on Thursday 23rd April, if anyone fancies coming along. All info here: lnk.to/LikeaCatLove... 🐈‍⬛

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Fabulous! And a badge, too! Thank you so much for getting a copy - it's made my day 💚 But the sign should say NOT TO DISTURB, I feel ;)

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Hello - me again. To mark the publication of LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK, I’ve written a little something for the Independent, all about Spark’s uncompromising devotion to her work. Here you go: archive.ph/kTnMt

Photo of Muriel Spark reclining in an armchair

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Someone created this on another social media channel, and now I must share it here:

Mocked up copy of a Human League CD, featuring the actors from EastEnders

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Thanks for all the support and enthusiasm, even when I've been at my most annoying. Thank you for pre-ordering, asking your library to buy it, sending endless photos of your cats sitting on/biting/looking contemptuously at your copy, and for getting tickets to the launch events starting next week.

Dedication page from my book, which reads ‘For those who like this sort of thing’. Overlaid with a screen shot of Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie, saying “for those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like”.

EVENTS
16 APRIL
Blackwell's, Manchester with Jenn Ashworth
21 APRIL
Hatchards Piccadilly, London with Sophie Haydock
23 APRIL
Topping & Co Booksellers,
Edinburgh
27 APRIL
Blackwells, Oxford with Francesca Wade
12 MAY
Urmston Bookshop

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I came downstairs this morning to HAPPY BOOK DAY bunting, which was very cute. Every day should be a HAPPY BOOK DAY!

A dining room, with bunting which says ‘happy book day’

A table with copies of Like a Cat Loves a Bird, as well as cards and champagne

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

This being out in the world is one of the most exciting things to ever happen to me... and I say that as someone who once had a picture of an octopus made from bits of dry pasta shown on Art Attack in about 1995 (but I don't like to brag).

A big stack of Like a Cat Loves a Bird on a round wooden table

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I know I've yammered on about little else for the last year, but I'm so pleased to share this strange, slippery book about restlessness, reinvention, cats being spun around on Persian rugs, and above all else the uncompromising, occasionally unhinged genius of Muriel.

Three copies of Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark on a round wooden table

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

My book, LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK, is out today!

Selfie, in which I am holding up a copy of my book, Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Oh it would! And here’s a mad meeting of worlds: Neil was signing a load of books at John Sandoe today, and look whose book he’s stacked all of his on top of!

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Go on then, here’s the full review 🐈‍⬛

Review exceeds the character count for alt text. Please message me if you’d like to read it, and I’ll send you the full text.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark is BOOK OF THE WEEK in The Times, and it's frankly outrageous that a small marching band hasn't trundled into my house to make some little celebratory parps in my honour 😤

A photo of me, holding up a copy of The Times which features a review of my book, accompanied by the headline: ‘A genius with claws - the picaresque life of Muriel Spark’

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Lovely review of LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK in The Scotsman, which picks up on everything I wanted the book to be: 🐈‍⬛ The opposite of a dry, door-stopper biography 🐈‍⬛ Genre-agnostic 🐈‍⬛ Full of mystery ‘A shapeshifting biography for a shapeshifting subject' - dreamy!

For someone who wrote biographies of writers early on in her career, Muriel Spark grew to be suspicious of the genre. As she warned American academic Dorothea Walker in 1988, "A number of biographical pieces already written about me are completely wrong, sometimes pure inventions."

In his new book about Spark ("as sly, nimble and elegant as her own work" claims his publisher, raising the bar ridiculously high), James Bailey consigns biography's normal rules to the footnotes and opts for inventiveness instead. So here, for example, is the the young Muriel, playing with her two dolls, Red Rosie and Queen, at her family's dining table: "Delicately, Muriel tilts an empty teacup to Queenie's closed lips, signifying the doll's frosty contempt for her jealous companion." Or here she is again, this time aged 39 and writing The Comforters, and he imagines her opening a bottle sent to her by Graham Greene, "she might have tilted the glass this way and that, watching as the wine took on the curves and contours of its new vessel: one shape becoming another."
What can one say? She might have done both these things. Then again, she might not. Does it matter? It would if Bailey had completely made up his facts, but he hasn't: he is being inventive not inventing. Graham Greene did indeed send Spark money along with cases of wine when she was at her lowest ebb in the mid-1950s (on condition that she didn't pray for him), and her dolls Red Rosie and Queenie made their literary debut in Spark's 1992 memoir Curriculum Vitae.
READ MORE: Nocturnes by Susan Tomes review: 'ingenious and astute'
These are, of course, the tiniest details in a spectacularly large life whose story is, as Bailey notes "every bit as strange, slippery and rife with contradictions as those she wrote", and which ranges from a happy Edinburgh childhood to marital misery in Rhodesia to black propaganda work in wartime London to literary superstardom in New York, and a contented old age in a Tuscan rectory. In telling it, Bailey's approach isn't a conventional "life" so much as a hybrid of literary criticism, personal appreciation and a novel ("A late summer evening. St John's Wood at sunset. A London sky the hue of a bloodshot eye. She walks slowly, several steps behind the woman she met on the…

Provided it is properly researched - which, with its 25-page bibliography Bailey's book certainly is, even if Dan Gunn's excellent Letters of Muriel Spark Vol 1 arrived too late last year to make the cut - I have no problem with this. There's no reason a shapeshifting author shouldn't have a shapeshifting book written about her. No reason it shouldn't zoom forwards and back across her life at whiplash speed, because that is the way our minds work and the way Spark's fiction did too. It might even, 20 years after her death (the actual anniversary is 13 April spread the word to a more literature-averse generation.
READ MORE: The Edge of Revolution by David Torrance review: 'balanced and solidly researched'
Last year, in her wildly apophenic biography Electric Spark, Frances Wilson wrote about how she "felt, on every page, her control of my hand" as she tried to puzzle out the convoluted paths of Spark's fiction and (in the words of her book's blurb)
"crack her code". Bailey, by contrast, both delights in and accepts Spark's elusiveness. "Just when we think we have the measure of her," he writes, "she slinks out of sight. She reemerges with a new way of writing from a desk in another part of the world... It is this lifelong slipperiness, this sense of perpetual reinvention that I seek to capture."
By and large he does, though I don't think he would object if I gave the last word to Dame Muriel. "There's nothing I can tell the public about my life that can clarify my books," she once told Harding Lemay, her US editor at Knopf, when he asked her for publicity material. "It's rather the books that clarify my life."
Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark, by James Bailey, Sceptre,

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