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20 books everyone should read in their fifties

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Where to start reading Iris Murdoch’s books

Under The Net

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne's College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature.

Jake is clever, lazy and scraping by in London as a hack translator. 
 
Jake loves Anna. Anna is an elusive and lovely singer. Anna loves Hugo. Hugo is a fireworks manufacturer turned movie producer and majestic philosopher. Hugo loves Sadie. Sadie is a glossy and dazzling film starlet. Of course, Sadie loves Jake. Then there’s Marvellous Mister Mars, the famous hound, who might or might not be Jake’s ticket up and out of this mess. 
 
‘A dazzling story, light and comic in touch’ 
The Times 
 
‘A brilliant talent’ 
Times Literary Supplement 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CHARLOTTE MENDELSON

The Bell

Iris Murdoch (Author) 
Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne's College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature. 
 
A S Byatt (Introducer) 
A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

Imber Court is a quiet haven for lost souls. 
 
It offers a sanctuary for those who can neither live in the world, nor out of it. But beneath the gentle daily routines of the community run currents of supressed desire, religious yearning and a legend of disastrous love. Charming, indolent Dora arrives in the midst of all this, and half-unwittingly conjures these submerged things to the surface. 
 
‘She’s writing about the only things that matter – love, goodness and how to be happy’ 
Independent 
 
‘A book that everyone who’s ever been tempted to throw in the towel and become a hermit should read’ 
Guardian 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SARAH PERRY

The Sea, The Sea

One of the most ambitious tours de force in many years... There are pages one races through to see what happens. She is a virtuoso at description

There is no doubt in my mind that Iris Murdoch is one of the most important novelists now writing in English...The power of her imaginative vision, her intelligence and her awareness and revelation of human truth are quite remarkable

A fabulous novel...funny and poignant and is arguably Murdoch's finest hour

An enjoyable, thought-provoking and unforgettable novel

A fantastic feat of imagination as well as a marvellous sustained piece of writing

Iris Murdoch (Author) Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne's College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature. Daisy Johnson (Introducer) Daisy Johnson was born in 1990. Her debut short-story collection, Fen, was published in 2016. In 2018 she became the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize with her debut novel Everything Under. She is the winner of the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize, A. M. Heath Prize and Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her debut play, Viola’s Room, was produced in 2024 by the immersive theatre company Punchdrunk. She currently lives in Oxford by the river. John Burnside (Introducer) John Burnside was among the most acclaimed writers of his generation. His novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs won numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and, in 2023, he received the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime’s achievement in literature. In 2011 Black Cat Bone won both the Forward and the T.S. Eliot Prizes for poetry. He died in 2024.

Charles Arrowby has determined to spend the rest of his days in hermit-like contemplation. 
 
He buys a mysteriously damp house on the coast, far from the heady world of the theatre where he made his name, and there he swims in the sea, eats revolting meals and writes his memoirs. But then he meets his childhood sweetheart Hartley, and memories of her lovely, younger self crowd in – along with more recent lovers and friends – to disrupt his self-imposed exile. So instead of ‘learning to be good’, Charles proceeds to demonstrate how very bad he can be. 
 
‘It isn’t all brainy fantasising in Murdochland; there’s wild swimming, appalling sandwiches, death, madness and sex’ Guardian 
 
‘Dazzlingly entertaining and inventive’ The Times 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAISY JOHNSON 
 
**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE**

The Black Prince

Murdoch is at the height of her powers in this novel, combining a complex plot with a heartrending analysis of the meaning of love

The best all-round novel that I&rsquo;ve read. It&rsquo;s a brilliant crime novel and a love story that&rsquo;s beautifully written

This is her best novel in my opinion&hellip; It has a breathtaking narrative skill and a triumphant ending

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story. 
 
Ex-tax collector and author of two unpopular novels Bradley Pearson wishes to devote his retirement to writing a masterpiece. But the doorbell and the phone keep ringing, and every ring brings with it an ex-wife, a friend in need, a sister in trouble or a young woman seeking a teacher. And so, dusty, selfish Bradley is plunged into the muddles and mysteries that will end in his doom. 
 
‘A source of wonder and delight’ 
Spectator 
 
‘Her humour is all the more achingly funny because she keeps it on the edge of our vision’ 
Daily Mail 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE HANNAH

The Sandcastle

When Bill Mor falls in love with Rain Carter he discovers a new way of being. 
 
Suddenly there is joy to be found in the world and his surroundings. To be with Rain he must abandon his prosaic life as a schoolmaster, his domineering wife Nan and his troubled teenaged children. He must draw on the powers of selfishness, hatred and anger in order to make the final break. But what love could survive all that violence? 
 
‘One of her most haunting works... She is spectacularly enigmatic’ Philippa Gregory 
 
‘An absolutely scintillating, slightly bizarre page-turner’ Daily Mail 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BIDISHA

A Fairly Honourable Defeat

Everyone is thinking about Julius King. 
 
For comfortable, long-married Hilda and Rupert, he is a mystery. For Morgan, Hilda's tormented sister, he is an obsession. For Morgan's abandoned husband, Tallis, he is the source of ruin. For Simon and Axel, deeply in love, he stirs up jealousy and unease. What is Julius thinking about? He's thinking about Hilda, Rupert, Morgan, Tallis, Simon and Axel, and they will not all survive his malevolent attention. 
 
'The most important novelist writing in my time' A. S. Byatt 
 
‘Murdoch’s art was expansive, non-autobiographical and insistently inventive’ 
Daily Telegraph 
 
‘Above all, she was a consummate story-teller, prodigiously inventive and generous’ 
Independent 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GARTH GREENWELL

A BBC Radio Collection

Iris Murdoch: The Sea, The Sea, A Severed Head & Something Special

Full-cast dramatisations and a reading of works by Iris Murdoch, plus a bonus interview with the author herself

Full-cast dramatisations and a reading of works by Iris Murdoch, plus a bonus interview with the author herself 
 
Booker Prize-winning author Iris Murdoch is renowned for her sublime fiction, exploring themes such as art, passion, morality and human freedom. Included in this collection are adaptations of two of her finest novels and a reading of her only published short story, as well as an edition of Writers Revealed in which Murdoch discusses her ideas and beliefs. 
 
The Sea, The Sea 
Charles Arrowby, celebrated actor, writer and director, has retired from his London world and come to the sea to become a hermit and draft his memoirs. But the past will not let him rest… This dramatisation of Murdoch’s most famous novel, which won the Booker Prize in 1978, stars John Wood as Charles and Joyce Redman as Hartley. 
 
A Severed Head 
When Martin Lynch-Gibbon's wife runs off with her analyst and his best friend, Palmer Anderson, the three characters attempt to behave in a civilised manner. But there is the matter of Martin's mistress and Palmer's sister to contend with – and undoubtedly the thin veneer of civilisation will crack… Iris Murdoch’s blackly comic satire on analysis and amorality stars Julian Rhind-Tutt, Victoria Hamilton and Matthew Marsh. 
 
Something Special 
Young Irishwoman Yvonne passionately believes that there is more to life than marriage to Sam, a respectable tailor's apprentice. But a night out in Dublin forces her to confront reality… Read by Catherine Cusack. 
 
Writers Revisited: Iris Murdoch 
Iris Murdoch talks about faith, religion and the creative process in conversation with Rosemary Hartill.

An Accidental Man

'Of the novelists who have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable' Raymond Mortimer

Iris Murdoch is incapable of writing without fascinating and beautiful colour

Iris Murdoch was one of the best and most influential writers of the twentieth century

Behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist

Iris Murdoch really knows how to write, can tell a story, delineate a character, catch an atmosphere with deadly accuracy

This is the story of the comic, relentless struggle for survival of Austin Gibson Grey, the accidental man. Austin is one of those people who thrives through the destruction of others. The others, in Austin's case, include his successful elder brother, Matthew, and the women who, one after the other, are convinced that they can 'save' him. In this role we meet Dorina, Austin's estranged wife, Mitzi, his alcoholic landlady, and a selection of other women who involve themselves in Austin's fate, with hilarious and appalling results.

Nuns and Soldiers

A romantic tangle, and a web of ideas and emotions from one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists.

A power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist

She is incapable of writing without fascinating and beautiful colour

Gertrude has lost her husband and Anne, an ex-nun, her God. They plan to live together and do good works. Meanwhile a cohort of interested parties circle. The 'Count', a Polish man in exile watches over Gertrude with loving patience. Tim, a failed painter, plans with his punk girlfriend to live off his rich friends. Who will judge whom in this intricate pattern of love and deceit? Who will behave well and who badly? Who will be lucky?

The Red and the Green

Murdoch's only historical novel, set in Ireland in 1916 on the eve of the Easter Rebellion in Dublin

Of all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable...behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist

This is a comedy with that touch of ferocity about it which makes for excitement

As the Easter Rebellion looms, tension mounts in the rain-soaked streets of Dublin. Tension is also ratcheting up at home. Pat Dumay is a Catholic and an Irish patriot. His relentlessly pious mother pursues her own private war with his stepfather, a man sunk in religious speculation and drink. Meanwhile Pat's Protestant soldier cousin, Andrew Chase-White, puzzles out his complex emotions about Ireland and the girl he loves. Weaving between them moves Millie Kinnard: fast, feminist, and only just respectable.

The Sea, The Sea & A Severed Head

Two novels demonstrating how this grande dame of English literature produced sophisticated philosophical fiction without compromising her belief that literature was to be 'grasped by enjoyment'. Includes the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea. An excellent addition to Everyman's growing number of Contemporary Classic omnibus editions

A formidable combination of intellectual drive and storytelling exuberance

Immensely readable ...Miss Murdoch is blessedly clever, without any of the aridity which, for some reason, that word is supposed to imply

First published in 1961, The Severed Head is regarded is one of Iris Murdoch’s most entertaining works. A dark and ferocious comic masterpiece, the novel traces the turbulent emotional journey of Martin Lynch-Gibbon, a smug, well-to-do London wine merchant and unfaithful husband, whose life is turned inside out when his wife leaves him for her psychoanalyst. 
 
 In The Sea, the Sea the landscape shifts to the seclusion of an isolated house on the edge of England’s North Sea, where Charles Arrowby, a big name in London’s glittering theatrical world, has retired to write his memoirs. Arrowby’s plans begin to unravel when he meets his first love and becomes haunted by the idea of rekindling his adolescent passion. 
 
 The Severed Head and Booker prize-winner The Sea, the Sea are two of Iris Murdoch’s most accomplished novels, displaying all her talent for combining profundity with playful creativity. Both tragic and comic, brooding and hilarious, they brilliantly reveal how much our lives are governed by the lies we tell ourselves as well as our all-consuming desire for love, significance and, ultimately, redemption.

Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995

Living on Paper

Iris Murdoch’s life, in her own words, from her schoolgirl days to her last years

Reading these letters is like living Murdoch's whole creatively, sexually and intellectually voracious life alongside her, and at breakneck speed. Thrilling

Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live: A Life of Montaigne

The letters themselves have been selected with conviction and care...the overwhelming sense of this volume is one of richness

Her mind, here as in everything she wrote, is formidable

Astonishing epistolary abundance from a woman who meant it when she told a friend that she could "live in letters"... Few books leave the reader with as dizzying sense of the need to question absolutely everything

We find a passionate engagement with the world of ideas, but most of all with friends, lovers, and pupils. These letters reveal Murdoch's extraordinary talent for affection, exuberant sense of fun, razor-sharp intelligence, and acute awareness of the transcendent

Exemplary... The reader grows up and grows old with Murdoch

This collection of letters provides a fascinating insight into the life of a complex and important novelist. It is a wonderful book

Murdoch was not writing for posterity; she was writing for her friends, or rather as a way of maintaining her friendships, whether intellectual, passionate or both...the letters reinforce Murdoch's qualities as a person

By turns, her letters show confidence, kindness and great consideration for her friends... For me, their real power is that they draw us back, irresistibly, to the books, her wonderful books... a vibrant portrait of this extraordinary woman

An unprecedented exposure of the heart and mind of a major novelist and thinker (the author of 26 novels and three major works of philosophy) and a woman who lived a life of unusual intellectual and personal freedom

Few writers comprehend the murky human messiness of desire like Iris Murdoch, or could plot like her, and these letters show us why.  Her life -- the multiple lovers, the emotional strain, the terrible food, the nuns and prizes and philosophy -- was chaos.  She'll always be my favourite writer; now I understand why

Fascinating... The letters are full of examples of her tolerance and her genuine interest in the inner lives of her friends. They can move engagingly from a rough, self-deprecating account of her failures and achievements to a series of penetrating asides about human nature and the power of art to illuminate it

The letters are fervent, philosophical, frenetic and witty... If there is an overarching message in this volume is is how far ahead of her time Murdoch was

A compulsively readable volume... She was a star of the first magnitude in the intellectual constellation of post-war Europe... Iris Murdoch's letters are a testament to her determination not merely to lead the intellectual life but to enjoy it too

Murdoch is an engaging, almost girlish correspondent, and the evidence here ranges from early letters written to a schoolfriend about pre-war London ... to her last confused words, written two years before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's

An intensely personal insight into Murdoch's romances and friendships, and the whirlwind of social life that she maintained over ther decades ... they frequently also underscore the genius of their author

If Murdoch's letters shock, it is because her behaviour is perhaps exaggerated, but not unrecognisable. We can laugh at self-deceivers in her novels for the same reason: not because we are so constant, but because they flit from passion to passion merely more frequently than we do. If we look carefully at these contradictory, incompatible people - Murdoch's characters; Murdoch herself - we don't see strangers; we see ourselves

With their deep knowledge of Murdoch's life and work, the editors have produced an authoritative, readable and informative volume that contextualizes the writer's vibrant, intense, and sometimes slyly witty correspondence. ... An impressively edited, sharply revealing life in letters

A suprising glimpse into the life of the avant-garde author

A selection of Iris Murdoch’s most important letters… collectively they provide a fascinating insight into one of the last century’s greatest thinkers

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne’s College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature. 
 
Iris Murdoch made her writing debut in 1954 with Under the Net. Her twenty-six novels include the Booker prize-winning The Sea, The Sea (1978), the James Tait Black Memorial prize-winning The Black Prince (1973) and the Whitbread prize-winning The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974). Her philosophy includes Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992); other philosophical writings, including The Sovereignty of Good (1970), are collected in Existentialists and Mystics (1997). 
 
Avril Horner is Emeritus Professor of English at Kingston University, London. She writes on women authors and Gothic fiction; her publications include co-authored books on Daphne du Maurier and Edith Wharton. With Anne Rowe she co-edited Iris Murdoch and Morality (2010) and Iris Murdoch: Texts and Contexts (2012). 
 
Anne Rowe is Associate Professor of English Literature and Director of the Iris Murdoch Archive Project at Kingston University. She is Lead Editor of the Iris Murdoch Review and her publications include The Visual Arts and Iris Murdoch (2002) and, with Priscilla Martin, Iris Murdoch: A Literary Life (2011).

EDITED BY AVRIL HORNER AND ANNE ROWE 
 
‘Destroy this and all letters. And keep your mouth shut’ 
 
This collection of Iris Murdoch’s most interesting and revealing letters gives us a living portrait of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and thinkers. The letters show a great mind at work – we see the young Murdoch grappling with philosophical questions, as well as feeling her anguish when a novel obstinately refuses to come together. 
 
They uncover Murdoch’s famed personal life, the subject of much speculation, in all its intriguing complexity, and her penchant for living beyond the bounds of social acceptability. We also begin to see the 'real life material' that fed into her fiction, despite her claims that her fiction never drew on reality. Above all we see the accumulation of life – intimate, irreverent, fiercely engaged with the world – in this extraordinary collection of letters.

Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

'Iris Murdoch has written a book which concerns all of us as human beings. There are pages here that one wants to embrace her for, pages that say things of fundamental human importance in a way that they have never quite been said before' Sunday Telegraph

This is philosophy dragged from the cloister, dusted down and made freshly relevant

Gripping...it enchants with a clause that sets you day-dreaming, captivates with a stream of thought, empowers with reminiscences

It is a great congested work, a foaming sourcebook, about life, imagination, tragedy, philosophy, morality, religion and art

Remarkable... Iris Murdoch has once again put us all in her debt

Anyone who has even the slightest interest in philosophical matters will find Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals an utterly absorbing book

A thrilling read… Metaphysics is an invaluable demonstration of how relevant philosophical issues are to our everyday lives, particularly in our relationship to art

The decline of religion and ever increasing influence of science pose acute ethical issues for us all. Can we reject the literal truth of the Gospels yet still retain a Christian morality? Can we defend any 'moral values' against the constant encroachments of technology? Indeed, are we in danger of losing most of the qualities which make us truly human? Here, drawing on a novelists insight into art, literature and psychology, Iris Murdoch conducts an ongoing debate with major writers, thinkers and theologians - from Augustine to Wittgenstein, Shakespeare to Sartre, Plato to Derrida - to provide fresh and compelling answers to these crucial questions.

The Book And The Brotherhood

A highlight amongst Murdoch's novels, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

It's the midsummer ball at Oxford, and a group of men and women - friends since university days - have gathered under the stars. Included in this group is David Crimond, a genius and fervent Marxist. Years earlier the friends had persuaded David to write a philosophical and political book on their behalf. But opinions and loyalties have changed, and on this summer evening the long-resting ghosts of the past come careering back into the present.

The Nice and the Good

Iris Murdoch really knows how to write, can tell a story, delineate a character, catch an atmosphere with deadly accuracy 
John Betjeman

A work of coruscating moral brilliance, The Nice and the Good revolves around a happily married couple, Kate and Octavian, and the friends of all ages attached to their house in Dorset. The novel deals with love in its many aspects, as embodied in a fascinating array of characters. The resonant sub plot involves murder and black magic in Whitehall, as the novel leads us through stress and terror to a profoundly joyous conclusion.

Irish Murdoch's most versitile novel, and chief among them is the pleasure which the authors take in her characters

Just as Jane Austen defines moral categories like "sense" and "sensibility" in her novels, so Iris Murdoch creates new constellations of meaning around those stand-bys of ordinary language, the nice and the good

A revolver shot rings through a Whitehall office one hot afternoon in the middle of an English summer. A Government official has apparently shot himself, but the circumstances are questionable – prompting Octavian Gray, head of the department in which the dead man worked, to investigate. 
 
Lawyer John Ducane is charged with the task, interviewing other civil servants by day, and by night attempting repeatedly — and unsuccessfully — to break up with his mistress. When Ducane travels to Gray’s Dorset home everything becomes even more mysterious and nothing is quite as it seems.

The Philosopher's Pupil

A darkly comic story of creativity, conscience, rebirth and love, which displays all of Murdoch's virtuoso imagination and narrative genius.

Marvellous.. Compulsive reading, hugely funny

We are back, of course, with great delight, in the land of Iris Murdoch, which is like no other but Prospero's

The most daring and original of all her novels

Never for a moment does one want to stop reading... I don't think Iris Murdoch has ever written better prose

Ambitious, unique and ingeniously plotted

In the English town of Ennistone, hot springs bubble up from deep beneath the earth. In these healing waters the townspeople seek health and regeneration, rightousness and ritual cleansing. 
 
To this town steeped in ancient lore and subterranean inspiration the Philosopher returns. He exerts an almost magical influence over a host of Ennistonians, and especially over George McCaffrey, the Philosopher's old pupil, a demonic man desperate for redemption.

The Time Of The Angels

In this haunting novel that 'troubles our sleep' (Richard Holloway) seven characters circle the enigmatic and callous figure of Carel, a 'priest of no God'

Iris Murdoch was one of the best and most influential writers of the twentieth century...she kept the traditional novel alive, and in doing so changed what it is capable of

The Time of the Angels is certainly her best; wittier, more lyrical, more deeply felt than ever before. She is an enchantress

I can think of few other novelists who could have written so superbly and so surely of the good and evil that encompasses us all

Carel is widowed rector presiding over a London church destroyed during the war. The rectory is home to an array of residents: his daughter, Muriel; his beautiful invalid ward, Elizabeth; their West Indian servant, Pattie; Eugene, a Russian emigre, and his delinquent son, Leo. Carel's brother, Marcus, is co-guardian of Elizabeth, but his attempts to get closer to the rector are constantly rebuffed. 
 
These seven characters maintain a constant dance of attraction and repulsion, misunderstanding and revelation, the centre of which is the enigmatic Carel himself - a priest who believes that, God being dead, His angels have been released.

A Word Child

Iris Murdoch conjures a murky London setting for a story of a brilliant and flawed man hoping for redemption

The readability of a novel like A Word Child is almost appallingly powerful

It would be difficult to speak too highly of the extraordinary skill and confidence here displayed

From the beginning of her career, Iris Murdoch seemed to enlarge the possibilities in front of the English novel. She was a writer of wonderful, and sometimes rather alarming idiosyncrasy... Hers was a liberating and a generous imagination

Iris Murdoch (Author) Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne's College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature. Ray Monk (Introducer) Ray Monk is the author of Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, for which he won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Duff Cooper Award. His previous work includes Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude.

Saved from a delinquent childhood by education, cheated out of Oxford by a tragic love tangle, Hilary Burde cherishes his obsessive guilt and ekes out a living in a dull civil service job. 
 
When the man whom he has harmed and betrayed reappears as head of his department, Hilary hopes for forgiveness, even for redemption and a new life, but finds himself haunted by a ghostly repetition.

An Unofficial Rose

A complex Shakespearean comedy of intertwined relationships, as nine closely linked characters search for love

Manipulating masterfully, Miss Murdoch turns out a deft three-in-one book: a sort of combined superior soap opera… a British novel of sensibility, and philosophical inquiry into reality

I suspect that when the intellectual map of our own times comes to be sketched out, Iris Murdoch will occupy a position analogous to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky... Murdoch writes better than anyone about the condition of being love: both the ecstatic joys of it and its capacity to turn otherwise decent individuals into monsters of selfishness and cruelty... Her vision of the world is heart-rending, but ultimately celebratory

After his wife's death, Hugh contemplates returning to his former mistress. His son, Randall, longs to abandon his shapeless marriage for a perfect partner. Randall's young daughter, Miranda, is adored by her Australian cousin Penn, but has attachments elsewhere. Her mother Ann has her own private dream, while taking upon herself the strains and pains of all the others. Impelled by affection, lust and illusion, these characters search for love within a tightly woven web.

Jackson's Dilemma

Funny, moving and utterly gripping, JACKSON'S DILEMMA is a triumphant achievement by one of our greatest writers.

Edward Lannion, the young master of Hatting Hall, is about to marry Marian Fox. 
 
At Penndean, a nearby house, preparations are under way for the wedding, overseen by the anxious Benet. Family and friends gather together for a celebratory dinner on the eve of the ceremony. The night is warm and clear, and after dinner the guests walk in the grounds and under the stars, full of happy anticipation. 
 
But then there is a sudden and extraordinary event, which changes everything. 
 
Iris Murdoch's novel is a marvellous and compelling human comedy. Edward and Marian, the couple at the centre of the story, are led by events to learn the truth about themselves; in the process, their friends, and lovers, are forced to make new choices, and see things as they are. 
 
And watching over all of them is Jackson, Benet's servant, a dark, mysterious and dangerous presence. It is Jackson who must intervene in the story to set the two young lovers onto the right path.

Iris Murdoch

Anne Rowe

Miles Leeson

Rachel Hirschler

Frances White

'Iris Murdoch’s newly published Poems from an Attic span her life; they’re often written for a specific other, and I almost felt bad – voyeuristic – reading them. But obviously I did read them, fascinated and uplifted by their unerring soul, their frankness and care. The final poem, Macaw in the Snow, is a bolt of light. It made me cry on the train'

Every page is full of her [Murdoch’s] pleasure in crafting these poems and using her tools

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