{{Short description|English pianist and author (1919–2010)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''Natasha Spender, Lady Spender''' (''née'' '''Litvin'''; 18 April 1919 – 21 October 2010)<ref>Sutherland, J. (2010): [https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/oct/22/natasha-spender-obituary Natasha Spender obituary] ''The Guardian'' (22 October 2010). Retrieved on 23 October 2010.</ref> was an English pianist and author. She was the second wife of the writer Sir Stephen Spender.<ref>[https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/australasia-travel/australia/lady-spender-b7mg293bj69 Obituary, ''The Times'', 23 October, 2010]</ref> ==Biography== She was born in London.<ref name=desert>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00772lv|title=BBC Radio 4: Desert Island Discs|website=Bbc.co.uk|accessdate=27 July 2020}}</ref> Her maternal family emigrated to Britain as Jewish refugees from Lithuania. Her mother, Rachel, learned English after the family settled in Glasgow, and later became an actress at the Old Vic. Her father, who was married to another woman, was the music critic, Edwin Evans.<ref>{{cite news|title=Obituary: Lady Spender |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/8084060/Lady-Spender.html |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph|accessdate=27 July 2020|date=24 October 2010}}</ref>
Due to her mother's work and precarous financial situation as a child Litvin was fostered her first nine years by a family in Maidenhead. She would later come to be raised in the family of George and Margaret Booth (her foster father was a son of Charles Booth) at Funtington House in West Sussex.<ref>{{Cite web |last=charlotte |date=2019-12-05 |title=The Natasha Spender archive is now available |url=https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/2019/12/05/natasha-spender-archive/ |access-date=2025-10-21 |website=Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library |language=en-GB}}</ref>
The Booths seeing that she had a talent for music encouraged her in this pursuit. At age 16, Litvin won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and studied with Clifford Curzon<ref name=desert/> and Arthur Benjamin. After the Second World War, she gave a concert at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to inmates who were recovering in its hospital wing. She was the soloist in the world's first televised concert for the BBC, the last night of The Proms on 13 September 1947 from the Royal Albert Hall.<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e8mfhn BBC Proms performance archive]</ref>
She first met Stephen Spender in 1940, marrying him in 1941, and the couple were for many years part of a literary circle which included W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, T. S. Eliot and Sir Isaiah Berlin. They divided their time between their homes in St John's Wood and Mas St Jerome in Provence.<ref name=bod/>
In her forties she was forced to give up the piano because of breast cancer, which affected her arm muscles, but she quickly re-established herself as an academic specialising in the psychology of music, and contributed to the ''Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians''. A collection of writings, about her late husband and her passion for gardening, ''An English Garden in Provence'', appeared in 2004.<ref name=bod>[https://archives.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repositories/2/resources/3432 Bodleian Archives]</ref>
In 2007, Spender appeared on BBC Radio 4's ''Desert Island Discs'', choosing Mozart's 1st movement of String Quintet in G Minor, Walter de la Mare's ''Desert Islands: An Anthology'', and her grand piano as her selected favourite record, book and luxury item respectively.<ref name="desert" />
Lady Spender died on 21 October 2010 at the age of 91. An archive of her papers is held at the Bodleian Library<ref name=bod/>
She had two children with Stephen Spender: their daughter Elizabeth "Lizzie" Spender, previously an actress, is the widow of the Australian actor and satirist Barry Humphries, and their son Matthew Spender is married to the daughter of the Armenian-born artist Arshile Gorky.<ref>[https://www.hauserwirth.com/ursula/24759-conversation-maro-gorky-matthew-spender-saskia-cosima-spender/ ''A conversation on Arshile Gorky, with Maro Gorky, Matthew Spender, and Saskia and Cosima Spender'']. Hauser and Wirth</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Spender, Natasha}} Category:1919 births Category:2010 deaths Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Music Category:Jewish classical pianists Category:English Jews Category:English writers about music Category:Wives of knights Category:Musicians from London Category:20th-century English classical pianists Category:20th-century English musicians Category:British people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Category:20th-century English women pianists Natasha