Hilary Spurling (Spurling variant)
Hilary Spurling (born 1940) is an English biographer known for her two-volume life of Henri Matisse and biographies of Ivy Compton-Burnett, Pearl Buck and Anthony Powell.
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Variant spelling: this person bears the related surname Spurling, not Spurlin.
Hilary Spurling (born Susan Hilary Forrest, 25 December 1940) is an English biographer and critic.[1]
Life
She was born in Stockport, Cheshire, and educated at Clifton High School in Bristol and Somerville College, Oxford.[1] In 1961 she married the playwright and novelist John Spurling, and they have three children.[1]
Works
Her first major biography was Ivy When Young (1974), about the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett, which won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1976. Secrets of a Woman's Heart (1984), the second volume, won the Duff Cooper Prize.[1] Her two-volume life of Henri Matisse, The Unknown Matisse (1998) and Matisse the Master (2005), won the Whitbread Book of the Year award for 2005.[1] Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China (2010) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and she published Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time in 2017.[1]
Honours
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (2005) and a CBE.[1]
See also
- Notable Spurlins · People strong
An index of notable people surnamed Spurlin, with related Spurling-surname figures listed separately as variants. - John Spurling (Spurling variant) · People strong
John Spurling (born 1936) is a Kenyan-born English playwright, novelist and art critic who won the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for The Ten Thousand Things. - Spurling (surname) · The Surname strong
Spurling is the fuller spelling from which Spurlin derives. Unlike Spurlin, it is well established in England, Australia and especially Bermuda as well as the United States. - The Spurlin name outside the United States · Culture strong
Spurlin is an overwhelmingly American surname today, with about 98% of bearers in the United States. The spelling is older than American settlement: English archives record Spurlins in Middlesex and Bristol between 1670 and 1717, and 18th-century leases name a field called 'Spurlins' in Hertfordshire. Outside the U.S. the related form Spurling is far more common.
References
Last reviewed 2026-09-24.