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Book of the Week: Living on Paper - Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995

Imogen Stubbs

Nigel Anthony

Iris Murdoch

Pete Nichols

Karen Rose

Book of the Week: Living on Paper - Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995: Episode 2

Living on Paper - Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Living on Paper - Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995, Episode 2

Iris Murdoch worked at the Treasury during the war but kept in touch with Frank Thompson.

Iris Murdoch worked at the Treasury during the war but kept in touch with her friend from Oxford Frank Thompson. He called Murdoch his 'dream girl', but they were never lovers.

In this episode, which embraces the years 1942-1944 when Murdoch was working at the Treasury, the letters to her Oxford friend, Frank Thompson, are particularly poignant.

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919 to Hughes and Rene Murdoch. While still a baby the family moved to west London. In 1938, Murdoch won a place at Somerville College, Oxford, where she read classics. After gaining her first-class degree, wartime work in the Treasury ensued before, in 1944, she joined the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and was posted to Belgium and Austria, where she worked helping those displaced by the war.

Murdoch left UNRRA in 1946 and, after a year's postgraduate studies at Newnham College, Cambridge, was appointed as a philosophy tutor at At Anne's College, Oxford. In 1954, while still at St Anne's, Murdoch debut novel Under The Net was published.

In a writing career that spanned over 40 years, Murdoch published 26 novels, five books on philosophy, six plays and two books of poetry. Her novel The Sea, The Sea won the 1978 Booker Prize and, in 1987, she was made a Dame. She remains one of the most celebrated British novelists of the 20th century.

The music used on this programme is Near Light by Ólafur Arnalds

Living On Paper: Letters From Iris Murdoch 1935-1995
Editors: Avril Horner and Anne Rowe

Readers: Imogen Stubbs and Nigel Anthony
Abridger: Pete Nichols

Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.

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Correspondence of the celebrated novelist. Read by Imogen Stubbs and Nigel Anthony

Correspondence of the celebrated novelist, edited by Avril Horner and Anne Rowe. Abridged by Pete Nichols. Read by Imogen Stubbs and Nigel Anthony

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