Hilary Spurling

Hilary Spurling, CBE, FRSL (born 25 December 1940) is a British writer, known for her work as a journalist and biographer.

Spurling was educated at Clifton High School, an independent school in Bristol in South West England, followed by Somerville College, Oxford.^[1]

She won the Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her biography of Henri Matisse in January 2006. Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China was published in March 2010.

She is married to playwright John Spurling, and has three children (Amy, Nathaniel and Gilbert) and six grandchildren.

Works

• Ivy When Young: The Early Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett 1884-1919 (1974)
• Mervyn Peake: Drawings (1974) editor
• A Handbook to Anthony Powell's Music of Time (1977) as Invitation to the Dance
• Secrets of a Woman's Heart: The Later Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett 1920-1969 (1984)
• Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book: Elizabethan Country House Cooking (1986)
• Paul Scott: A Life (1990)
• Paper Spirits. Collage Portraits by Vladimir Sulyagin (1992) introduction
• The Unknown Matisse: Volume 1 - A Life of Henri Matisse 1869-1908 (1998)
• La Grande Thérèse: The Greatest Swindle of the Century (1999) on Thérèse Humbert
• The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell (2002)
• Matisse the Master: The Conquest of Colour 1909-1954 (2005)
• Ann Stokes: Artists' Potter (contributor) (2009)
• Matisse: The Life (abridged version of two earlier works) (2009)
• Pearl Buck in China (also published as Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck) (2010)

Awards

• 1976, Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for Ivy When Young: The Early Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett 1884-1919
• 1984, Duff Cooper Prize for Ivy When Young: The Early Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett 1884-1919
• 2005, Whitbread Book of the Year award for Matisse the Master: The Conquest of Colour 1909-1954
• 2010, James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography, for Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China^[2]

References

External links

• British Council page