by Iris Murdoch
For three decades, Murdoch published a new book almost every year, including historical fiction such as The Red and the Green, about the Easter Rebellion in 1916, and the philosophical play Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues. She was awarded the 1978 Booker Prize for The Sea, The Sea, won the Royal Society Literary Award in 1987, and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 by Queen Elizabeth.
Her final years were clouded by a long struggle with Alzheimer’s before her passing in 1999.
Murdoch as an infant with her mother, Irene, in 1919. Irene was a trained opera singer, though she gave it up after Iris was born. Murdoch’s father, John, worked as a civil servant once the family moved to London.
Murdoch in 1923, at age three or four. She was an only child and remembered her childhood as “a perfect trinity of love.” Her father encouraged her to read at a young age and her favorite authors included Lewis Carroll and Robert Louis Stevenson.
The London house in which Murdoch grew up, seen here in 1926.
Murdoch in 1935. She was studying philosophy, classics, and ancient history at Oxford at the time of this photo.
Murdoch with an unidentified friend in 1946. At this time Murdoch was studying philosophy at Cambridge, where she enrolled after working for the United Nations to help Europeans displaced by the Second World War.
John Bayley, Murdoch’s husband, in the 1960s. The two were married in 1956 after meeting at Oxford.
Murdoch and Bayley at an unknown date. One of the couple’s shared passions was swimming, which they did together whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Bayley and Murdoch on vacation in Orvieto, Italy, in September 1988, with family friend Audi Villers, whom Bayley married after Murdoch’s death.
Bayley and Murdoch in Delft, Holland, in 1996. Murdoch was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the mid-1990s.
Bayley’s writing desk, which originally belonged to J.R.R. Tolkien. Murdoch’s scrapbook can be seen atop the desk.
Iris’s writing desk. Bayley’s book, An Elegy for Iris, published in 1999, is a loving tribute to their long marriage and recounts the last years of Iris’s life.
Murdoch and Bayley’s home in Steeple Aston, near Oxford, where the couple lived until Murdoch’s death. Bayley had an indoor pool built at the house for Murdoch to go swimming—one of her favorite hobbies—whenever she chose.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1956 by Iris Murdoch
ISBN: 978-1-4532-0099-5
This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media
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