The Iris Murdoch Society 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.

This lecture was given by Peter Webster, a scholar of contemporary religious history, with a particular interest in the religious arts. His most recent book was the first biography of Walter Hussey; Dean of Chichester and patron of the arts. The audio recording of a public lecture given at the University of Chichester on 19th February 2022, as part of a study day at the Iris Murdoch Research Centre. My thanks are due to Miles Leeson for the invitation, and to the audience for a very engaged and stimulating discussion afterwards. I examine Christian reactions to Murdoch’s work in three areas: her strictly philosophical work on metaphysics and ethics, and her novels. I explore the remarkable closeness of Murdoch’s distinctive preoccupations to those of British theologians in the period. However, her position outside the usual circles of Christian discourse made it difficult for her to be heard and, when she was, her fundamentally atheistic position made her philosophical work hard to digest. The final third of the paper then looks at Christian readings of her novels, in which readers found much more congenial material with which to engage. Authors discussed include: (among the theologians) Don Cupitt, Colin Gunton, Eric Mascall, Alasdair Macintyre, John A.T. Robinson, Keith Ward; among the critics: Bernard Bergonzi, Ruth Etchells, David Holbrook, Valerie Pitt. In relation to aesthetics, there is some discussion of Walter Hussey, Anglican patron of the arts. https://peterwebster.me/2022/02/21/iris-and-the-christians-what-did-the-british-churches-make-of-murdoch-1954-c1983/

In this episode Miles is joined by Lucy Bolton (Queen Mary, University of London), Lisa Smithstead (University of Exeter), and Melanie Williams (University of East Anglia)- three noted film scholars - to discuss the impact and legacy of the Oscar-winning film 'Iris', based on the first of John Bayley's memoirs about his wife, Iris Murdoch. You can find Lucy's book on Murdoch here: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-contemporary-cinema-and-the-philosophy-of-iris-murdoch.html and her essay on the film itself, here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16d6996.10?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

In this podcast Miles is joined by Paul Fiddes, Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Oxford, to discuss his latest book, Iris Murdoch and the Others: A Writer in Dialogue with Theology. Paul is the author or editor of over twenty five books, including recent publications on Lewis and Williams, and a forthcoming monograph on Shakespeare later in 2022. Find the book here: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Iris-Murdoch-and-the-Others-by-Paul-S-Fiddes/9780567703347 You can find out more about Paul, and his research centre, The Centre for Theology and Modern European Thought, here: https://ctmet.theology.ox.ac.uk/home

In this episode I'm joined by Justin Broackes (Brown, USA), Gary Browning (Oxford Brookes), and Alison Scott-Baumann (SOAS)to discuss Murdoch's lifelong engagement with the fiction and philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. From her first meeting with him in Brussels in 1945, right the way through to 'Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals'. Have your copy of Sartre: Romantic Rationalist to hand! Justin is the Editor of 'Iris Murdoch, Philosopher': https://www.bookdepository.com/Iris-Murdoch-Philosopher-Justin-Broackes/9780198701200?ref=grid-view&qid=1639760683318&sr=1-1 Gary is the author of 'Why Iris Murdoch Matters': https://irismurdochsociety.org.uk/product/why-iris-murdoch-matters/ Alison is the co-editor of 'Iris Murdoch and the Moral Imagination': https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0786440260?tag=bookfinder-test-b-21&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1&language=en_GB&selectObb=new

In this podcast Miles is joined by Paul Hullah, Associate Professor of English Literature at Meiji Gakuin, and President of the Iris Murdoch Society of Japan. Paul discusses his early life, literature, music and his meeting and subsequent friendship with Iris Murdoch. He and Yozo Muroya edited the only collection of Murdoch's poetry to date, as well as a volume of her essays. We talk about her poetry and why she changed Paul's life. Unfortunately the 'Poems' collection is out-of-print, but Paul hopes to have some copies available in 2022. 'Occasional Essays' by Iris Murdoch is available via Amazon. You can find Paul's tribute to Iris here: https://youtu.be/8q7BV6c2vUE

Joining me today is Prof. Benjamin Lipscomb (Houghton College, NY, USA) to discuss his new book 'The Women are up to Something' which considers the four women who changed philosophy in the mid-Twentieth Century: Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch. You can buy it here! https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Women-Are-Up-to-Something-by-Benjamin-J-Bruxvoort-Lipscomb/9780197541074

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/

Cora Diamond, leading philosopher, discusses her contributions to Wittgenstein, logic, mind, language, ethics, and the philosophical inquiry into our relation as humans to other animals. Topics include Murdoch's rejection of traditional philosophy, the role of reactive attitudes, the usefulness of concepts and texts, reflection on experience and progress in philosophy, and Quine's naturalism compared to Murdoch's humanistic approach.

This 'In Conversation' talk was given as part of the first online Iris Murdoch Conference on the 15th July, 2021. Sarah and Avril discuss the importance of Iris’ use of the gothic, and the impact it had on Sarah's own fiction. Avril Horner (Emeritus Professor, Kingston University) is a world-leading expert in the Gothic. She has co-edited collection on Murdoch’s work, as well as ‘Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch’ with Anne Rowe. Her biography of Barbara Comyns is forthcoming. Sarah Perry is the internationally best selling author of the novels Melmoth, The Essex Serpent, and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstone’s Book of the Year Awards and the British Book Awards, and has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. Her essays have been widely published, and she has contributed to the Guardian, the New York Times, the Observer, and the London Review of Books. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has a PhD in Creative Writing, and has been a UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague, and a Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library and the Savoy Hotel in London. Her second novel, the No. 1 bestseller The Essex Serpent, is currently being adapted for television, starring Claire Danes in the lead role.