Nice and the Good

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 is incapable of writing without fascinating and beautiful colour" The Times "Iris Murdoch was one of the best and most influential writers of the twentieth century" Guardian "Irish Murdoch's most versitile novel, and chief among them is the pleasure which the authors take in her characters" Country Life "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" Atlantic