Natasha Spender

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Natasha, Lady Spender (born London, 1921) is an English author and former pianist. She is the widow of the writer Sir Stephen Spender.

Born Natasha Litvin, at age 16 she won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. However 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.

She first met Stephen Spender in 1940, and the couple were for many years part of a literary circle which included W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, T. S. Eliot and Isiah Berlin. Their daughter Lizzie is married to the Australian actor/comedian Barry Humphries, and their son Matthew is married to the daughter of the Armenian artist Arshile Gorky.

A collection of writings, about her late husband and her passion for gardening, An English Garden in Provence, appeared in 2004. Her own memoirs are to be published in 2008.