Iris Murdoch is grievously misunderstood. If you care about fiction, this should make you furious. Twentieth and, inevitably, twenty-first century literature, television, film, are packed with female writers whose work is dismissed.
Read MorePlease don’t say that I’m alone. Or perhaps I am, and that’s why I do it. Yes, I know some of you, the captains of industry, the retired teachers, were forced to learn bushels of poetry, in the good old days. You can declaim “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” and “I wandered lonely as a cloud” if called upon . . . but you never are. Memorising couplets may train your intellect, and keep the great voices of the canon alive but, otherwise, does it sustain you?
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