Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) was an Irish-born British novelist and philosopher. Born in Dublin, she was raised in London and studied at Oxford, later teaching philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford. Her philosophical work includes Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) and The Sovereignty of Good (1970), and she wrote extensively on ethics, Platonism and the nature of the good.

She turned to fiction with her first novel, Under the Net (1954) — later named one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the American Modern Library — and went on to write 26 novels exploring sexual relationships, morality and the power of the unconscious.

She won the 1978 Booker Prize for The Sea, the Sea. Murdoch was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1987. She began to show the first effects of Alzheimer's disease in 1995 and died of the condition in 1999.