Peter Conradi - Iris Murdoch - A Life - The Authorized Biography

I should like particularly to thank Mrs Olive Scott for allowing me access to James Scott’s journals, Professor Jeremy Adler for access to Franz Steiner’s papers and Johanna Canetti for her father’s. I met with great kindness on many journeys: from Sybil Livingston and Cleaver Chapman in Belfast; from Billy Lee in Dublin; from Susie Ovadia and Jean-Marie Queneau on two trips to Paris; from Allan Forbes in Boston and on Naushon island; from Maria Panteleev in Bulgaria; from Lois MacKinnon in Aberdeen. This biography is the culmination of twenty-one years of research, teaching and publishing on Iris Murdoch.

I owe to my other great teachers, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, their having taught me the courage to look closely.

I owe much to the following: Janet Adam Smith, Pauline Adams, Professor Jeremy Adler, Peter Ady, Sir Lawrence Airey, Professor Miriam Allott, Mulk Raj Anand, Lord Annan, Professor Elizabeth Anscombe, Jennifer Ashcroft, John Ashton, Reggie Askew, Lord Baker, Sir Peter Baldwin, Lady Catherine Balogh, Stephen Balogh, Jonathan Barker, Betsy Barnard, Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham, Margaret Bastock, Brigadier Michael Bayley, Denys Becher, Paul Binding, Hylan Booker, Dr Marjorie Boulton, Cheryl Bove, Lord Briggs, Michael Brock, Anne Brumfitt, Dame Antonia Byatt, Carmen Callil, Clare Campbell, Johanna Canetti, Sir Raymond Carr, Hugh Cecil, Jonathan Cecil, Cleaver Chapman, Professor Eric Christiansen, George Clive, Alex Colville, Robert Conquest, John Corsellis, Milein Cosman, Jean Courts (later Austin), Barbara Craig, Rosemary Cramp, Vera Hoar (later Crane) and Donald Crane, Julian Chrysostomides, Don Cupitt, Marion Daniel, Peter Daniels, Gwenda David, Barbara Davies (later Mitchell), Jennifer Dawson, Rt Hon. Edmund Dell, Patrick Denby, Barbara Denny, Kay Dick, Professor Mary Douglas, Professor Sir Kenneth Dover, Professor Sir Michael Dummett, Moira Dunbar, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Lilian Eldridge, Anne Elliott, Professor Dorothy Emmet, Leila Eveleigh, Professor Richard Fardon, Rachel Fenner, Professor John Fletcher, Professor Jean Floud, Professor M.R.D. Foot, Allan Forbes, Anthony Forster, Professor Christopher Frayling, Honor Frost, Lady Fulton, Reg Gadney, Margaret Gardiner, Stephen Gardiner, Susan Gardiner, Tony Garrett, Professor Peter Geach, Antonia Gianetti (later Robinson), Phillida Gili, Victoria Glendinning, John Golding, Sir Ernst Gombrich, Carol and Francis Graham-Harrison, Sister Grant, Marjorie Grene, John and Patsy Grigg, Dominic de Grunne, Michael and Anne Hamburger, Sir Stuart Hampshire, Tiril Harris, Jenifer Hart, Andrew Harvey, Lord Healey, Katherine Hicks, Tom Hicks, Wasfi Hijab, Professor Christopher Hill, Professor Eric Hobsbawm, Michael Holroyd, Laura Hornack, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Maurice Howard, Gerry Hughes, Priscilla Hughes, Psiche Hughes, Professor Sally Humphreys, Rosalind Hursthouse, Julian Jackson, Dan Jacobson, Mervyn James, Jože and Marija Jancar, Lord Jenkins, John Jones, Madeleine Jones, Sandra Keenan, Sir Anthony Kenny, Sir Frank Kermode, Charles Kidd, Francis King, Ruth Kingsbury (later Mills), Ken Kirk, Todorka Kotseva, Professor Georg Kreisel, Michael Krüger, Nicholas Lash, Michel Lécureur, Billy Lee, David Lee, Dr Ann Leech, Professor George and Alastine Lehmann, Sir Michael Levey, Peter and Deirdre Levi, Deirdre Levinson, Paul and Penny Levy, Mary Lidderdale, Professor Ian Little, Penelope Lively, Sybil Livingston, Professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Professor David Luke, Richard Lyne, Katherine McDonald, Professor John McDowell, Ben Macintyre, Shena Mackay, Dulcibel MacKenzie, Lois MacKinnon, Michael Mack, Holga Mackie, Aubrey Manning, Sister Marian (Lucy Klatschko), Noel and Barbara Martin, Derwent May, Stephen Medcalf, Mary Midgley, Professor Basil Mitchell, Julian Mitchell, Juliet Mitchell, Gina Moore, David Morgan, Professor Brian Murdoch, Professor Bernard and Pamela Myers, Professor A.D. Nuttall, John O’Regan, Margaret Orpen (later Lady Lintott), Susie Ovadia, Valerie Pakenham, Lynda Patterson (later Lynch), Denis Paul, Kate Paul, Professor David Pears, Sister Perpetua, Professor D.Z. Phillips, Barry Pink, Julian Pitt-Rivers, Sir Leo Pliatzky, Frances Podmore, Elfrieda Powell, Joseph Prelis, Jean-Marie Queneau, Lord Quinton, Kathleen Raine, Professor David Raphael, Professor Marjorie Reeves, Professor Herbert Reiss, Frances Richardson, Gloria Richardson, Pierre Riches, Peter Rickman, Barbara Robbins, Professor Kenneth Robinson, Anne Robson, Professor Stanley Rosen, Dr Anne Rowe, Bernice Rubens, Chitra Rudingerova, Gabriele Rümelin (later Taylor), Geoffrey de Ste-Croix, Inez Schlenker, Olive Scott, Elizabeth Sewell, Jenny Sharp, Patricia Shaw (later Lady Trend), John Simopoulos, Jan Skinner, Jewel Smith, Prudence Smith, Peg Smythies, Polly Smythies, Professor Susan Sontag, Natasha, Lady Spender, Naku Staminov, Peggy Stebbing (later Pyke-Lees), Professor Frances Stewart, Professor Anthony Storr, Professor Sir Peter Strawson, Professor Paul Streeten, Irene Sychrava, Richard Symonds, Professor Charles Taylor, Dorothy Thompson, Olivier Todd, Professor Richard Todd, Svetlana Toderova, Ann Toulmin, Professor Stephen Toulmin, Jeremy Trafford, Jeremy Treglown, Nancy Trenamen, Professor Rachel Trickett, General Slavcho Trunski, Jane Turner, Garth Underwood, Anne Valery, Anne Venables, Nicholas Veto, Ed Victor, Audi Villers, Sir John Vinelott, Margaret Vintner (later Rake), Janice Wainwright, Rosemary Warhurst, Baroness Warnock, Harry Weinberger, Lord Weidenfeld, Dee Wells, Anne-Louise Wilkinson (later Luthi), John and Anne Willett, Professor Sir Bernard Williams, Charlotte Williams-Ellis (later Wallace), Susie Williams-Ellis (later Cooper-Willis), A.N. Wilson, Colin Wilson, Anne Wollheim, Professor Richard Wollheim, Professor David Worswick, Max Wright, Werner Wunsche, Pat Zealand (later Trenaman).

My agent Bill Hamilton gave unstinting support and excellent advice; I’m grateful to Phillida Gili, Emma Beck and Humphrey Stone for helping me find, and allowing me to use, the photos taken by their mother Janet Stone; and to the Schiller National-museum, Marbach-am-Neckar, for the transparency of Conversation in the Library, 1950. While every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright-holders of photographs, in some cases this has proved impossible. I would be grateful for any information which would enable me to rectify such omissions in future editions.

Michael Fishwick and Robert Lacey’s scrupulous editing has improved the text. Sarah Lee and Anne Roberts gave invaluable assistance. Douglas Matthews compiled the index and helped me correct a number of mistakes. Jane Jantet produced the family trees, and she and Daphne Turner worked with heroic ingenuity, energy and patience to find answers to myriad questions. Without their extraordinarily hard work, the task of writing would have taken at least twice as long. Any and all mistakes are my responsibility, and no one else’s. My partner Jim O’Neill kept me sane. Without his love and support I could not have begun. I amassed so much material that an archive will accommodate the overflow.

In November 1999 in Bulgaria, Philippa Foot, who had brought Iris the news of Frank Thompson’s murder in 1944, and I met Frank’s partisan General Trunski, fourteen days before his death. We also listened to Naku Staminov’s eye-witness account of Frank’s execution, and stood in silence by his grave. Philippa handed me a red carnation to leave there, as from Iris. I owe more than I can convey to John Bayley and Philippa Foot, whose roles in Iris’s story what follows makes clear. Each read the book in draft and saved me from errors. To both this book is dedicated.

* She profited more from Andrew Harvey’s understanding of Buddhism (see Chapter 20).

* Sydney Afriat saw her outside the Collège Franco-Brittanique in Paris in 1949. She was strikingly not as others are, with a straw-coloured fringe, not beautiful, immobile, having a quality of stillness. Three years later at St Anne’s he told her he’d seen her, with an older woman, and when and where. ‘Yes, that was my mother,’ IM replied without surprise. Such stories of strangers being struck by one sighting and remembering it are common.