The new season of the podcast starts with a special on the author, essayist, critic, spy, journalist and much else besides, Elizabeth Bowen. She was a friend of Iris Murdoch (whom she influenced) 'I was very fond of her...she should have been Queen', Virginia Woolf, and many more. She's now seen as a major figure of Twentieth Century culture.

Joining me to discuss her life and work are Nicola Darwood (University of Bedfordshire, Allan Hepburn (McGill University, Canada), and Nicolas Royle (University of Sussex). All three have written and published widely on Bowen's work and are experts in the field. 

The Bowen - Welty Letters mentioned can be found here: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/iur.2021.0501

More on the relationship between Bowen and Murdoch here. 
https://irismurdochsociety.org.uk/2020/09/01/literary-motherhood-elizabeth-bowen-and-iris-murdoch/

Elizabeth Bowen Podcast

To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Murdoch's 'Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals' I'm joined by Gillian Dooley (Flinders University, Australia), Nora Hämäläinen (University of Pardubice, Czech Republic), and Frances White (IMRC, Chichester) to give an introductory overview of the work. As this is Murdoch's magnum opus this is the first in a series of four podcasts being released in 2022 focusing on it.

You can find Gillian and Nora's edited collection 'Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals' here: 
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-18967-9?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=google_books&utm_campaign=3_pier05_buy_print&utm_content=en_08082017

Gillian Dooley is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in English at Flinders University, Australia. She was the founding general editor of the Flinders Humanities Research Centre's electronic journal Transnational Literature from 2008-2018, and was founding co-editor of Writers in Conversation 2014-2020. She has published three monographs, several scholarly editions and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters including the co-edited Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. Her latest work Listening to Iris Murdoch: Music, Sounds and Silences will be published in the ‘Iris Murdoch Today’ series with Palgrave Macmillan in July this year.

Nora Hämäläinen is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Ethics as study in Human value at the University of Pardubice in the Czech Republic. As well as being the author of Literature and Moral Theory and    Descriptive Ethics: What Does Moral Philosophy Know About Morality she is also the co-editor of Reading Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals with Gillian. She is currently working on two interrelated projects:  completing a monograph called The Making of the Good Person: Moral Philosophy, Self-Help and Technologies of the Self, where I look at some discussions on self-transformation and self-development in philosophy and popular culture. She is also working on a long term project on moral change (the change and renegotiation of moral frameworks and axioms).

Frances white is the deputy director of the iris Murdoch research centre at the university of Chichester. As well as publishing widely on Murdoch, including the biography Becoming Iris Murdoch in 2014 she is the co-editor of the Iris Murdoch Today series with Palgrave Macmillan and the Editor of the Iris Murdoch Review. She is currently editing Iris Murdoch and the Literary Imagination, also with Palgrave.

Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals Podcast 1

Join Anne Rowe and Miles Leeson as they guide you around London's Wallace Collection, stopping off to discuss three key paintings that feature in Murdoch's novels: Hal's Laughing Cavalier, Titian's 'Perseus and Andromeda', and Rembrandt's 'Titus, the Artist's Son'. These feature in her first novel 'Under the Net' and her Booker Prize-winning 'The Sea, The Sea', respectively. You can view them here:

https://www.wallacecollection.org/art/exhibitions-displays/past-exhibitions/frans-hals-the-male-portrait/

https://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=65351&viewType=detailView

https://www.wallacecollection.org/art/collection/collection-highlights/titus-artists-son/

Anne Rowe is Visiting Professor at the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester. Her many books include the first work on Murdoch and Art 'The Visual Arts and the Novels of Iris Murdoch', as well as 'Iris Murdoch' in the Writers and their Work Series.

The Wallace Collection Podcast

Miles is joined by Silvia Caprioglio Panizza to discuss her new book 'The Ethics of Attention: Engaging the Real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil'. You can find out more about the book, here: 

https://www.routledge.com/The-Ethics-of-Attention-Engaging-the-Real-with-Iris-Murdoch-and-Simone/Panizza/p/book/9780367756932

Silvia Caprioglio Panizza is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice, and a fellow of the PEriTiA project (Policy, Expertise, and Trust in Action) at the Centre for Ethics in Public Life, University College Dublin. She has edited and translated Simone Weil’s Venice Saved with Philip Wilson (2019) and co-edited (with Mark Hopwood) The Murdochian Mind (Routledge, 2022).

Ethics Of Attention Podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by Prof. Anne Rowe (Chichester and Kingston) to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of what may be Murdoch's greatest novel.

Anne is Visiting Professor at the IMRC at Chichester and Emeritus Research Fellow at Kingston. Her many books include 'Iris Murdoch' in the 'Writers and their Work' Series, which you can purchase at a discounted rate from the Society, here:

https://irismurdochsociety.org.uk/product/iris-murdoch-writers-and-their-work/

The Black Prince Podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by Daniel Read (University of Kingston) to discuss his new book, 'Degrees of Evil in Iris Murdoch's Fiction and Philosophy'. 

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-75841-6

We range across all of her published work - in literature, fiction and theology - and ask why the nature of evil obsessed her  throughout her career.

Iris Murdoch and Evil Podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by joined by Mark Hopwood, Associate Professor of Philosophy, from the University of Sewanee, USA to discuss his new book – which has just been published – The Moral Philosophy of Iris Murdoch. This is his first monograph since he published the co-edited volume that he’s perhaps best known for in Murdoch circles, the magisterial Murdochian Mind in 2022. Both books published by Routledge.  

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Moral-Philosophy-of-Iris-Murdoch-by-Mark-Hopwood/9780367819576

Examining the role of vision, imagination, love, goodness, and transcendence in Murdoch's work, The Moral Philosophy of Iris Murdoch presents a compelling and original argument that she is one of the major moral philosophers of the twentieth century.

The Moral Philosophy of Iris Murdoch Podcast

Miles is joined by Lucy Oulton (University of Chichester) to discuss her new book, Iris Murdoch's Wild Imagination: Nature and the Environment (Palgrave, 2025).

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-87833-6

This book presents the first ecocritical study of novelist, philosopher, poet and public intellectual Iris Murdoch (1919–1999). It brings her love of the natural world into the light, arguing for its critical significance when Murdoch conveys an awareness of intricately interconnected ecologies through her work: an awareness that anticipates the motivations and concerns of modern-day environmental humanities. The book is the first of its kind to assess some of Murdoch's poems, seen as early articulation of the environmental imagination that finds recurrent expression in her novels, philosophical writings and personal journals throughout her writing life. This book offers a significant entry point for a new research direction in Murdoch studies by explicating her unique perspective on the natural world.

Lucy Oulton is a Research Associate at the Iris Murdoch Research Centre, University of Chichester, UK. She is an Editor of the Iris Murdoch Review, to which she has also contributed.

Iris Murdoch's Wild Imagination Podcast

Have you always thought you could do with some expert guidance when reading Iris’s philosophy? Well help is at hand! This episode marks the start of a new mini-series of episodes where we’ll be reading Iris’s collected essay collection – Existentialists and Mystics – with a team of excellent academics and seasoned readers, and you can join us for the experience! Each episode will focus on a small number of essays – or perhaps just one essay if it is substantial in length – and explore exactly what Murdoch was up to and how the essay fits in with her overall vision. We’ll keep in roughly chronological order, starting with her work from the 1950s and ending up in the mid-1980s with her two Platonic dialogues. Although Existentialists and Mystics doesn’t contain all of her published philosophy it’s a great place to start so, if you’ve not got a copy, you can pick one up very reasonably second-hand via this link:

https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?isbn=9780140264920&st=xl&ac=qr

In this episode we’re starting out with her earliest material on Existentialism – closely reading ‘The Existentialist Hero’ and ‘The Novelist as Metaphysician’ as well as her review of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity – all from 1950. The two essays were originally given as talks on BBC Radio’s The Third Programme; and are the groundwork for her first monograph, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist that would be published just a few years later in 1953.

Joining Miles is Sam Filby, currently working on his PhD thesis on Murdoch at Northwestern University, Chicago; and the current recipient of the BSH research fund. His work focuses on Murdoch’s aesthetics and moral psychology

Existentialists and Mystics 1 Podcast

In this lecture Miles Leeson, Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester, discusses Murdoch’s reception by her contemporaries and look at the lighter side of how she was lampooned, both directly and indirectly, in the work of H.E. Bates, Malcolm Bradbury, Brigid Brophy, Barbara Pym and Ian McEwan, as well as the reception of her work by Philip Larkin and Monica Jones. Whilst a good deal of this was affectionate, and some even complementary, there was also a streak of jealousy and cruelty present. As Murdoch grew in popularity, and as a public intellectual figure, this became commonplace and is part of the mythic figure of ‘Iris’ that was played out in the 2001 film, but has now has begun to fade from the public imagination. Miles’s lecture asks what it might mean for us to admire her work today in the light of these texts.

Iris Murdoch Birthday Lecture 2025

In this episode we discuss Murdoch’s conceptualisation of virtue and what it might mean to be virtuous. We’ll range across her philosophy, of course, but we’ll also have time to visit her fiction and consider if she embeds some of her ideas about virtue into her novels.

Joining Miles to discuss this fascinating topic is Tony Milligan.

Tony is a Research Fellow in  Philosophy of Ethics in the Theology and Religious Studies at Kings College, University of London. And his current research, as part of the KCL (China) team and the University of Manchester (Russia) team within the Cosmological Visionaries project, takes in the ethical aspects of dialogue building between local scientists, indigenous peoples and national minorities in Russia and China in the face of climate change. The key theme uniting his broader areas of research is otherness and our shared future. This works its way into various publications on Space (other places), philosophy of love (other people), and animals (other creatures). Tony is also an Affiliate of the Lau China Institute. For many years he’s been fascinated by Murdoch’s philosophy, indeed his PhD thesis at the University of Glasgow was titled 'Iris Murdoch’s Romantic Platonism' and he’s gone on to publish widely on her work.



Iris Murdoch and the Virtues

Welcome to a new season of the Iris Murdoch Podcast! In this episode we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of one of Murdoch very best novels, and one of the six first-person male narrated novels, A Word Child. This is a revisit as we discussed this wonderful novel way back in 2021 – it was our ninth podcast and this episode is our seventieth! – so if you might want to catch up with that one if you love this novel. As you might expect, we also discuss a wide range of Murdoch's other novels.

Joining Miles is Frances White. Frances is the Deputy director of the IMRC here at Chichester and the author of many works on Murdoch, the most recent being the edited collection Iris Murdoch and the Western Theological Imagination (Palgrave, 2025)

And joining Frances and Miles is Liz Whittome. For many years she was the Chief and Principal Examiner of English for Cambridge Examinations. She has published several books on studying English at A-Level with Cambridge University Press. She is currently writing a monograph on Murdoch and Shakespeare.


A Word Child Revisited Podcast

In this episode Miles talks to Andrea Delaune (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) about her new book, 'Iris Murdoch and Early Childhood Education: Enhancing Attention and Moral Vision in Pedagogy' (Routledge, 2025). 

https://www.routledge.com/Iris-Murdoch-and-Early-Childhood-Education-Enhancing-Attention-and-Moral-Vision-in-Pedagogy/Delaune/p/book/9781032886169

Andrea Delaune is Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at University of Canterbury (Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha), New Zealand, where she conducts research at the intersection of ethics, pedagogy and early childhood practice. Her scholarly work explores how moral philosophy—especially concepts of attention, care, and moral vision—can illuminate and revitalise the everyday practices of early childhood teaching, care and policy. One of her central studies draws on the work of Iris Murdoch, applying Murdoch’s ideas of attention and the moral imagination to early childhood contexts. Beyond her research, Delaune is actively engaged in the professional community: she serves as Co-President of OMEP Aotearoa, New Zealand (the local chapter of the World Organisation for Early Childhood Education), where she is involved in advancing children’s rights, well-being of early childhood educators, and ethical dimensions of educator-child relationships.

Iris Murdoch and Early Childhood Education: Enhancing Attention and Moral Vision in Pedagogy (Routledge, 2026), argues for a reconceptualisation of teaching as a lived philosophical practice rather than purely a technical act.

 



Iris Murdoch and Early Childhood Education Podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by Anne Rowe (University of Chichester/Kingston), Rachel Hirschler (Kinston University) and Rosanna Hilyard (Chatto & Windus) to celebrate the publication of 'Poems from An Attic: Selected Poems 1936-1995', published today by Chatto and Windus.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/470920/poems-from-an-attic-by-murdoch-iris/9781784746124

ANNE ROWE is Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester and Emeritus Research Fellow with the Iris Murdoch Archive Project at Kingston University. She has published widely on Iris Murdoch, including The Visual Arts and the Novels of Iris Murdoch (2002), Iris Murdoch in the Writers and Their Work series (2019) and most recently is Co-Editor of Poems from an Attic: Selected Poems 1936-1995 by Iris Murdoch (2025).

Rachel Hirschler works at the Kingston University archives and is lead transcriber for Murdoch’s poetry and much else besides.

Rosanna Hilyard is Assistant Editor at Chatto and Windus, and has been shepherding Poems from an Attic to publication. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The Isis Magazine, The Northern Echo, and several anthologies including Tactical Reading, Adrift and Outside Of Me.


Poems from an Attic Podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by Frances White and Robert Cremins - both from the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester - to discuss Murdoch's final novel, Jackson's Dilemma.

Frances is the Deputy Director of the IMRC at Chichester and the author of many works on Murdoch, the most recent being the edited collection Iris Murdoch and the Western Theological Imagination (Palgrave, 2025) and Poems from An attic: Selected Poems 1936-1995 (Chatto and Windus, 2025).

Robert is a writer and was Senior Lecturer in the Honours College at the University of Houston, and the Faculty Director of Creative Works. A novelist, short story writer and literary critic, Robert has got a lifelong love of Murdoch’s fiction. He has recently co-edited North American special edition of the Iris Murdoch Review, published in November 2025, and is writing his PhD thesis at Chichester on the influence of Henry James on Murdoch.

Jackson's Dilemma Podcast

In this lecture, given on Monday 15th December 2025, Dr Lucy Oulton (University of Chichester), Murdoch's enduring relationship with the figure of Peter Pan is discussed: her talk is titled '‘An Ousted Gabriel’: Iris Murdoch and the Enduring Allure of Peter Pan'

Wendy and Peter Pan, a stage adaptation of the J.M. Barrie novel Peter and Wendy, embraces a key detail from Barrie’s own childhood, dealing sensitively with the topic of child loss. The play foregrounds Wendy’s attempts to come to terms with the loss of a (third) brother, while her parents are overwhelmed by grief.

Iris Murdoch’s fascination with Peter Pan is well documented. Cheryl Bove and Anne Rowe observe that she ‘most heavily depends on the Peter Pan myth […] in relationships which lack warmth, connections and love’. My talk focuses on three of Murdoch’s fictional daughters who attempt to fathom their own circumstances in a shifting state of adolescence. I explore Murdoch’s ideation of the girls in relation to this cultural icon, and her incisive understanding of what it means to grow up.
Lucy is a Associate at the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester and her first monograph, Iris Murdoch’s Wild Imagination: Nature and the Environment was published earlier this year. She is an  editor of the Iris Murdoch Review and has lectured intentionally on Murdoch’s life and work.

IMS Christmas Lecture 2025

In this 75th Episode Special, Miles is joined by Daniel Read (Kingston University, UK) to answer questions from the Iris Murdoch Society and via the social media channels.

You can find out much more, and join the society, here: www.irismurdochsociety.org.uk

The questions sent in are:

1.	Could Iris Murdoch drive? 
2.	How should Murdoch’s philosophical seriousness be reassessed in light of recent scholarship on her as a public intellectual?
3.	In what ways did Murdoch’s Irish background shape her imagination, ethics, and sense of exile or belonging?
4.	How has Murdoch’s relationship with religion and the sacred been represented differently in scholarship versus media portrayals?
5.	How should Murdoch’s private life—especially her complex relationships—be integrated (or resisted) in critical interpretations of her novels?
6.	What is Murdoch’s place within post-war British women’s writing, and why has she often been treated as an exception rather than part of a continuum?
7.	How do contemporary debates about feminism, agency, and power reframe Murdoch’s representation of women?
8.	Murdoch insists on the reality of the Good as something external and authoritative.
How might that claim speak to contemporary moral and political life, where moral language is often treated as subjective or unstable?
9.	Murdoch’s late novels are often described as difficult, bewildering, even radically alien.
How should we read the strangeness of the late Murdoch: as decline, experiment, or metaphysical intensification?
10.	What do you think is the most important unfinished task for Murdoch scholarship today?


75th Episode Podcast

In this episode we are returning to our close reading of the collection Existentialists and Mystics. For the third podcast of our mini-series, we’ll be discussing Murdoch's review of Gabriel Marcel’s ‘The Image of Mind’ and her essay ‘The Existential Political Myth’. The first is a review of The Mystery of Being by Marcel from 1951 – the first volume of his published volume of Gifford Lectures. Murdoch’s essay 'The Existential Political Myth' was first published in Socratic Digest in 1952. 

Joining me today is Samuel Filby who was the guest on the first episode of this mini series. He is currently working on his PhD thesis on Murdoch at Northwestern University, Chicago. His work focuses on Murdoch’s aesthetics and moral psychology.


Existentialists and Mystics 3 Podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by Cathy Mason (Central European University, Vienna) to discuss her new book, 'Iris Murdoch's Moral Philosophy: Reframing the True, the Real, and the Good'.

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Iris-Murdochs-Moral-Philosophy-by-Cathy-Mason/9780198940432

Cathy Mason is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Central European University, Vienna and her main areas of research interest are Ethics, Epistemology (especially Moral Epistemology), Aesthetics, and Iris Murdoch's philosophical writing (particularly at the points where these areas converge). Her previous work has focused on the moral phenomena of everyday life, often drawing on virtue theory. She has written about a variety of topics such as friendship, love, mourning, forgiveness, hope and humility. Prior to coming to CEU, she held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Cambridge – where she studied for her PhD - and taught at the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham. 

Iris Murdoch's Moral Philosophy Podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by Jil Evans and Charles Taliaferro (St. Olaf College, Minnesota, USA) to discuss their new book, 'Iris Murdoch and the Transcendent'. We cover love, ethics, mora illumination, gender, vision and the will and much more!

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Iris-Murdoch-and-the-Transcendent-by-Charles-Taliaferro-Jil-Evans/9781009631594

Jil Evans is an abstract artist and author whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is held in private and museum collections throughout the United States, including Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Flaten Art Museum, and Halle Ford Museum of Art. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, which include a Jerome Foundation Grant, Arts Midwest/National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board grant, and a Pew Grant to study and paint Italy, and residencies at the American Academy in Rome and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She has co-authored three books with Charles Taliaferro.

 Charles Taliaferro is Emeritus professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Faithful Research, and a member of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of twenty books, most recently The Image in Mind; Theism, Naturalism and the Imagination, co-authored with the American artist Jil Evans. He has been a visiting scholar or guest lecturer at a large number of universities, including Brown, Cambridge, Notre Dame, Oxford, Princeton, and the University of Chicago.[1][2][3] Since 2013 Taliaferro is editor-in-chief of the journal Open Theology. He is the author of over twenty books in theology and philosophy of religion.


Iris Murdoch and the Transcendent Podcast

In this episode Miles discusses the mid-twentieth century gothic novel with a particular focus on Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns and, of course, Iris Murdoch. An enduring subject of fascination, the gothic novel has undergone substantial change over the course of its history and the rise of the mid-century gothic – and how it interacts with other forms of fiction writing at this time – is one we know you’ll be interested in.

Joining Miles  to discuss the mid-century female gothic is Avril Horner. Avril is Professor Emeritus of English at Kingston University and is the author of numerous books on the Gothic – most recently Women and the Gothic – with Sue Zlosnik (2016) – and the author of Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence (Manchester University Press, 2024) and of the forthcoming  Rebecca: Biography of a Novel (MUP: 2026).

Murdoch aficionados will know her as the co-editor of Iris Murdoch and Morality and Iris Murdoch: Texts and Contexts both from Palgrave – and the co-editor of Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995 from Chatto and Windus (2015).

Long-time listeners of the podcast will remember that Avril was one of my guests on ‘Iris Murdoch for Beginners’  so who better to be today’s guest as we discuss mid-twentieth century Gothic fiction and put Murdoch into conversation with both Daphne du Maurier and Barbara Comyns. 


Comyns, Murdoch, du Maurier, and the Gothic Podcast

In this episode we’re celebrating the publication of The Oxford University Socratic Club, 1942-1972: A Life, published by Bloomsbury in the UK today! 

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Oxford-University-Socratic-Club-1942-1972-by-Jim-Stockton/9781666932249

Jim is Lecture Emeritus in Philosophy at Boise State University, Idaho where his interests and teaching include: Medieval Philosophy, Aesthetics, Philosophy and Film, and the History of Ideas.

https://www.boisestate.edu/philosophy/jstockton/


The Socratic Club Podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by Lesley Chamberlain to discuss her newly-published monograph, 'Undoing the Moral Empire: Moral Philosophy in post-War Britain'. 

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/undoing-the-moral-empire-9781350457751/

After 1945, Britain wanted to be a new country.

The authority of state and church were giving way, the Empire was dismantled, and it was no longer clear who was leading whom in matters of morals. Individuals were left to reinvent their ethical lives anew.

The lives and works of the philosophers discussed in this book were caught up this sea-change. Bernard Williams, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, Richard Wollheim, Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre were all characters in search of a moral England, with a particular vision of the good society. From communitarianism to swinging Sixties' individualism, and radical theories of art – which understood questions of ambiguity, error and forgiveness more than the state ever could – this is the story of their sometimes convergent but often discrepant ideas on ethical life in the second half of the twentieth century.

Undoing the Moral Empire is a work of biography, social history and the history of ideas that masterfully reconstructs the shifting sentiments of the post-war era, reconfiguring enduringly relevant questions of freedom, virtue, and society.

Lesley is an author, literary critics and translator whose work has focused on Rilke, Nietzsche, German philosophy,  Conservative Modern Russia, Heidegger, Van Gogh, Lenin, Freud, travel writing, cuisine in Russia and Poland, journalism and fiction – twelve books in all. She’s also the author of the forthcoming chapter on Murdoch and Russian Literature in the Oxford Handbook of Iris Murdoch. This new book marks a homecoming for Lesley. You can find out much more about her work at her website: 

http://lesleychamberlain.co.uk/

Undoing the Moral Empire Podcast

In this episode Miles and his guests kick-off a fantasy world cup featuring all of Murdoch's novels.

Murdoch’s novels will be separated into seven groups – we’ve added in the short story ‘Something Special’ and the recently published ‘Poems from an Attic’ to make the numbers works – and each day following the release of the podcast they’ll be a window of 24 hours for you to vote for your favourite via Facebook and X (Bluesky doesn't have a poll function, sadly) The top two works from each group go through, with two third-placed works going through as ‘lucky losers’  to the round of 16. There will  then be knock-out stages ending up in the final, and even  a 3rd/4th  place play-off.

Who will win? Who will end up missing out? And what will be over or underrated? The choice will be up to you!

Joining me to discuss the groups, permutations, and the runners and riders are James Jefferies, created of irismurdoch.info  and Liz Dexter, blogger extraordinaire and author of Iris Murdoch and the Common Reader.

Iris Murdoch's World Cup Podcast

The first podcast from the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester hosted by the Director, Miles Leeson. Guests include Visiting Professor Anne Rowe, Visiting Fellow Frances White, and researcher Lucy Oulton.

Under the Net Podcast

This podcast discusses 'Murdochland' - the locations, characters, and buildings that inhabit Murdoch's novels: London is central.

Guests are Chris Boddington, author of 'Iris Murdoch A-Z' - a major reference work to all her characters, locations, and so much more ; James Jefferies, creator of irismurdoch.info - an online site dedicated to Murdoch's London, and Prof Anne Rowe co-author of 'Sacred Space, Beloved City: Iris Murdoch's London' and many other works on Murdoch. 

Anne's Book: www.cambridgescholars.com/sacred-space-beloved-city-15

Chris' Book here: https://murdochspeople.com/

James Website: https://irismurdoch.info

Murdochland Podcast

In this podcast Miles Leeson is joined by three renowned experts on Murdoch's philosophy; Justin Broackes (Brown University, USA), editor of 'Iris Murdoch, Philosopher' and author of a forthcoming commentary on SOG; Hannah Marije Altorf (St. Mary's, London) author of 'Iris Murdoch and the Art of Imagining' and translator of the Dutch edition of SOG, and Mark Hopwood (Sewanee, University of the South, USA), editor of the forthcoming'The Murdochian Mind'.

You can find 'Existentialists and Mystics' here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0140264922/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tu00_p1_i6

Justin's Collection: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/iris-murdoch-philosopher-9780198701200?lang=en&cc=gb

Hannah's Book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/iris-murdoch-and-the-art-of-imagining-9780826497574/

Mark's Work: https://www.sewanee.edu/academics/philosophy/facstaff/hopwood.php

Sovereignty of Good Podcast

My guests on this podcast are Dr Frances White, Deputy Director of the IMRC at Chichester and author of the short biography 'Becoming Iris Murdoch', Fr Mark Patrick Hederman Former Abbott of Glenstall Abbey in Ireland and author of two works with a focus on Murdoch (see below), and James Marriott, Deputy Books Editor of The Times.

Frances Book: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Becoming_Iris_Murdoch.html?id=9APuoQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Mark Patrick's Books:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Haunted-Inkwell-Art-Our-Future/dp/1856073475

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Opal-Pearl-Towards-Gyroscopic-Ethics/dp/178218306X/ref=sr_1_12?dchild=1&qid=1592437559&refinements=p_27%3AMark+Patrick+Hederman&s=books&sr=1-12&text=Mark+Patrick+Hederman

James' Webpage at The Times:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/profile/james-marriott?page=1

The Bell Podcast

Joining me to discuss Iris and Swimming are Natasha Alden from the University of Aberystwyth, Hannah Marije from St Mary's University of London, and Lucy Oulton from the research Centre at Chichester. 

We discuss her life writing, no-fiction, philosophy, and of course her fiction including:

Under the Net
The Bell
The Sea, The Sea
The Unicorn
A Fairly Honourable Defeat
The Philosopher's Pupil

Iris Murdoch and Swimming Podcast

Joining Miles to present a general introduction to Murdoch's life and work are  Prof. Cheryl Bove (Ball State University, USA), Prof. Avril Horner (Kingston University, UK), and Kieran Setiya (MIT, USA). 

In this podcast we introduce each facet of Murdoch's life and work - her biography, fiction, philosophy, life writing, her love of London, and more. You can discover more via these links:

Avril's Co-edited collection of Murdoch's letters: 

https://www.psbooks.co.uk/Living-on-Paper-9780701187057

Cheryl's book 'Understanding Iris Murdoch':

https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&ref=bf_s2_a1_t1_1&qi=cw5b7Q6.xXFowro,ke3OyG,UAjs_1497963026_1:3:9&bq=author%3Dcheryl%2520browning%2520bove%26title%3Dunderstanding%2520iris%2520murdoch

Kieran's Website:   http://www.ksetiya.net/ with a link to his own '5 Questions' Podcast

Iris Murdoch for Beginners Podcast

The Iris Murdoch Society exists to promote her work, further her philosophical vision, and enhance and extend knowledge. You can find our website here: https://irismurdochsociety.org.uk/
You can find us on Twitter -  https://twitter.com/IrisMurdoch
On Facebook -  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2213699051
And at Chichester University: https://www.chi.ac.uk/humanities/public-humanities/literary-and-cultural-narrative/iris-murdoch-research-centre/iris-murdoch-society

The Iris Murdoch Podcast

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks