British writer and philosopher Dame Iris Murdoch was born on 15th July 1919 in Phibsborough Dublin but moved with her parents to London at only a few months old. Murdoch studied the “Greats” at Somerville College, Oxford and graduated in 1942 with a first-class honours degree.
In 1978, her novel “The Sea, The Sea” won Murdoch the Booker Prize, in 1987 she was made a Dame of the British Empire, and in 1997, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for “a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature”.
Murdoch’s later years were clouded with a long and difficult battle with Alzheimer’s before her death on 8th February 1999.
Murdoch’s novels which are filled with tales of morality, love and lust, good and evil are still influencing today’s writers. New editions of her novels have been released by Vintage Classics to commemorate what would have been her 100th birthday, with introductions from the likes of Daisy Johnson, Sarah Perry and Garth Greenwell.
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