The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

There her education was closely guided by an idiosyncratic teacher named Christina Kay, the inspiration for the title character in her best-known novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Spark left her husband, taking her son and his nanny with her in 1940, but because of World War II’s travel restrictions, she was unable to return to Britain until 1944.

She left the man and took his religion and became a nun in the course of time.
But that autumn, while she was still probing the mind that invented

persons known of old can never be of much help

She listened to their conversation, at the same time calculating their souls by signs and symbols, as was the habit in those days of young persons who had read books of psychology when listening to older persons who had not.

Suddenly, like migrating birds, Sandy and Jenny were of one mind

come without intruding on every-day life

There was a wonderful sunset across the distant sky, reflected in the sea, streaked with blood and puffed with avenging purple and gold as if the end of the world had

It was never the same in later years when the languages of physics and chemistry, algebra and geometry had lost their elemental strangeness

Many families in the olden days could afford to send but one child to school, whereupon that one scholar of the family imparted to the others in the evening what he had learned in the morning. I have long wanted to know the Greek language, and this scheme will also serve to impress your knowledge on your own minds