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  • The Oldie

    Dressing down

    Jun 26, 2024 3 minutes

    In 1978, a few days before she won the Booker Prize for The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch came to lunch.

    She and her husband, John Bayley, were good friends of my mother and my stepfather, James Howard-Johnston, a Byzantine historian at Oxford. I was 14 and Iris was very sweet to me, not at all intimidating, though she did have a commanding look.

    She stood by the grand piano in the drawing-room of our house. Her white shirt was hideous; so bright it scorched

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