She was a literary great, he was the son abandoned when he was just five, and their rift and his subsequent disinheritance has become part of the Muriel Spark legend.
They were still estranged when the acclaimed author died in 2006 and only now has the death of her son Samuel Robin Spark brought the saga to a close.
He spent much of his childhood looked after elsewhere as his mother pursued her literary career and engineered a return for them from Rhodesia, where he was born, to the UK. But even after that was achieved, they were not reunited and he grew up in a Dominican convent, a UK boarding school and eventually his grandparents' house in Edinburgh.
It led to a tense relationship with his mother and a sense of abandonment. His father had walked out when Robin was just five, but relations with his mother spilled into a catastrophic and very public feud in 1998.
Robin insisted his grandmother, who had helped raise him in Edinburgh - Sarah Uezzell - was fully Jewish. Muriel Spark, who had converted to Catholicism, rejected the claim.
She sent him occasional presents, but they never reconciled. She felt he hated her and couldn't stand her reputation, he said he had no regrets - that he was content they had drifted apart.
When it was revealed that she would be disinheriting him in favour of her companion of 30 years, Penelope Jardine, he said he did not care and would not be pursuing a share of her fortune - which he might have been entitled to, under Italian law, regardless of the wording of her legacy.
"There are only so many meals you can have, or beds you can sleep in," he was reported to have said. He was lucky, he added, never having placed much value on money for its own sake.
He lived the rest of his life in Edinburgh, working as a civil servant an a modestly accomplished artist.
One of his most significant pieces of art - the £15,000 High Priests Seal - was reputedly offered to his mother, but she rejected it. She later said: "I don't think he's any good and nothing will make me say so."
She left her entire estate - estimated to be worth £3m before ongoing publication rights are factored in - to Jardine with whom she lived for more than three decades in a farmhouse in Tuscany at Oliveto near Arezzo.
Letters acquired by the National Musuem of Scotland later shed more light on the rift between her and Robin. In one letter Muriel rejected the idea of visiting him in Edinburgh: "to be frank my self-respect and health, as well as my nature, demand an atmosphere of consistent friendliness, and I would have to be absolutely sure there would be no more unpleasantness and abuse," she said. In another, in 1966, she refused an invitation to Robin's wedding. "I'm afraid I couldn't possibly come all that way back in March – I would risk upsetting my US residency permit and tax arrangements, even if I could afford the expense and the time off work," she said.
Although Robin's solicitors were believed to have approached her executors to see if he might be entitled to make a claim on her estate, she had made preparations. Her Italian lawyer Lorenzo Contri told the press: "I helped her draw up the will and there was no mention of her son at all. In fact, she gave me a letter which she said should be posted if he made a claim on her will.
"The letter was very specific. She did not want her son to receive anything. The letter detailed her terrible experiences with him and their terrible relationship."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here