The Sacred and Profane Love Machine by Iris Murdoch

Backlisted

Backlisted Podcast

Arts, Books, Leisure, Hobbies

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2026

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ian Patterson, author of Books: A Manifesto , returns to Backlisted for a joyful discussion of Iris Murdoch and her sixteenth novel The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), the winner of the Whitbread literary award for fiction. For reasons that will be obvious, the talk soon turns to other novels by Murdoch, including The Bell (1958), The Black Prince (1973), The Sea, the Sea (1978) and The Green Knight (1993), plus the film adaptations of A Severed Head (1961) and the unknown book that spawned erotic thriller Love Standing Up (1985). We listen to interview clips from the archive and excerpts from her remarkable and prescient speech ‘Art and Tyranny’ (1972). The author was considered to be a literary titan in her lifetime. But where does her reputation stand in 2026? Was Murdoch a philosopher who wrote novels, a novelist who wrote philosophy, a pioneer of wild swimming, or a unique combination of the three? This is a playful and wide-ranging conversation between Ian, Una, Andy and Nicky, with articulate individuals exchanging sophisticated ideas in a manner similar to, yet entirely unlike, characters in an Iris Murdoch novel. We hope you enjoy it just as much as we did. *For £150 off any Serious Readers HD Light and free UK delivery use the discount code: BACK at seriousreaders.com/backlisted * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes and original writing, become a patron at www.patreon.com/backlisted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books.
0:08.6	The novel featured on today's show is The Sacred and Profane Love Machine by Iris Murdoch,
0:16.2	first published in 1974 by Chasau and Windus in the UK, and The Viking Press in the USA.
0:24.6	I'm Andy Miller, author of the Year of Reading Dangerously and Inventory,
0:29.5	an unreliable guide to my record collection.
0:32.6	I'm Dr. Una McCormack, award-winning science fiction author and associate fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge.
0:40.3	And I'm Nicky Birch, the producer and editor of Backlisted.
0:44.3	Backlisted has been running for 10 years now, and over that time we've built up a loyal community of listeners, patrons and guests,
0:51.3	plus of course a library of some 250 shows containing everything from a Christmas carol to the Ice Palace.
0:59.5	We have, and we've been making backlisted shows now every two weeks for all of that time.
1:04.5	That's a lot of reading in Andy, Una and John's case, or in my case, buying a lot of books and attempting to read some of them.
1:11.3	However, soon we are about to take a well-earned break from Backlisted,
1:15.0	focusing on our solo albums before we reform again for more stadium shows later in the year.
1:21.9	Yes. Long-time listeners will recall, even if long-time means just last year, 2025, we kept banging on about how we've been here for 10 years.
1:31.5	Well, that was partly to prepare you for the fact that we're tired now.
1:35.9	And we need, it's been a long, it's been a long time.
1:41.1	250 plus shows.
1:43.1	So we're going to take a break just to recharge our batteries for a little while.
1:47.5	So we're really grateful for your support. Thus far, we'll be back, but we need a rest.
1:54.7	Yeah, so this episode is the penultimate show before we take a break.
1:58.4	But during that break, we'll be replaying some of our archive with
2:01.5	lots of new updated introductions. And for those lovely souls who would still like to hear from us
	...

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