A Severed Head

This is a comedy with that touch of ferocity about it which makes for excitement – Elizabeth Jane HowardOf all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable…behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist * Sunday Times *Immensely readable…Miss Murdoch is blessedly clever without any of the aridity which, for some reason, that word is supposed to imply – Philip Toynbee

Iris Murdoch was born in Dublin in 1919. She read Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, and after working in the Treasury and abroad, was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Anne’s College and later taught at the Royal College of Art. Until her death in 1999, she lived in Oxford with her husband, the academic and critic, John Bayley. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 PEN Awards received the Gold Pen for Distinguished Service to Literature.

Miranda Seymour is the author of the innovative and widely admired Ring of Conspirators, a study of Henry James and his circle, and of the acclaimed biography Ottoline Morrell- Life on the Grand Scale, twelve times selected as book of the year for 1992. She also writes novels and children’s books. She lives in London.

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