Iris Murdoch

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside The UK. At Heartland Credit Union, we get it. Money's tight right now, and every dollar counts. As a not for profit financial coop, we're built for tough times. Our mission isn't making money, it's helping our members save theirs. We help members afford their car payments with low loan rates, skip frustrating monthly fees that financial giants charge, and help them save for a brighter future. Join the thousands of Minnesotans we've been helping for over eighty five years. Visit heartlandcu.com to learn more. Federally insured by NCUA. In California, BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programs. Hello. Iris Murdoch, 1919 to 1999, was seen in her lifetime as a novelist who was also a philosopher, but it's her 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 and Emeritus Research Fellow with the Irish Murdoch archive project at Kingston University, and Miles Leeson, director of the Irish Murdoch Research Centre and reader in English literature at the University of Chichester. Miles Leeson, what do we need to know about Iris Murdoch's early life? Well, I think we need to know that she was born in Blessington Street in Dublin in July 1919. And, she comes very much from a Anglo Irish middle class Protestant background, her father being from a Presbyterian stock. Her parents were Hughes, a a civil servant at that point, just coming out the wall, and Reaney, 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 the family moved to England before she's one. First, they moved to Acton, and then they move later to Chiswick where she spends the majority of her childhood. And it's a very happy childhood. She grows up as an only child in a what she later referred to as a perfect trinity of love. And it's interesting that, her family didn't have much contact with anybody outside the family. There wasn't any major socializing with the rest of the Irish diaspora in London at all. And because of this, …