Natasha Spender

Lady Spender died on 21 October 2010 at the age of 91. An archive of her papers is held at the Bodleian Library

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.

At age 16, Litvin won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and studied with Clifford Curzon 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.

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.

Natasha Spender, Lady Spender (née Litvin; 18 April 1919 – 21 October 2010) was an English pianist and author. She was the second wife of the writer Sir Stephen Spender.