Which novelist and critic, who was married to Iris Murdoch for over forty years, died earlier this year aged 89?
Iris Murdoch to 1967 she taught one day a week in the General Studies department at the Royal College of Art. In 1956 Murdoch married John Bayley, a literary critic, novelist, and from 1974 to 1992 Warton Professor of English at Oxford University, whom she had met in Oxford in 1954. The unusual romantic partnership lasted more than forty years until Murdoch's death. Bayley thought that sex was "inescapably ridiculous." Murdoch in contrast had "multiple affairs with both men and women which, on discomposing occasions, [Bayley] witnessed for himself". Iris Murdoch's first novel, "Under the Net", was published in 1954. She had
Iris Murdoch of Arts and Social Sciences Kingston University Iris Murdoch Dame Jean Iris Murdoch (; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish-born British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, "Under the Net", was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 1987, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Her books include "The Bell" (1958), "A Severed Head" (1961), "The Red and