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Hello Iris Murdoch 1919 to 1999 was seen in her lifetime as a novelist who was also a philosopher but it's a philosophy

that is now gilding her reputation.

Reacting to the horrors of the Second World War she argued that morality was not

subjective a matter of taste, but objective and good was a fact we could recognize.

To do that though, we would need to see the world as it really is, not as we want to see it, and her novels are full of characters who are not yet that enlightened.

With me to discuss Iris Murdoch, philosopher and novelist are Anil Gomes, fellow and tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College University of Oxford,

Anne Rowe visiting professor at the University of Chichester,

an emeritus research fellow with the Irish Murdoch Archive Project at Kingston University and Miles Leeson, Director of the Irish

Murdoch Research Center and Reader in English Literature at the University of Chichester.

Miles Gleeson, what do we need to know about Irish Murdoch's early life?

Well I think we need to know that she was born in Bressington Street in Dublin in July

1919 and she comes very much from an Anglo-Irish middle-class Protestant background.

Her father being from a Presbyterian stock.

Her parents were Hughes, a civil servant at that point, just coming out wall and Rini and an aspiring opera singer.

So she's born in Ireland but she doesn't stay there particularly long.

Perhaps within a few weeks it's a little bit unclear she moves to England she's certainly the

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