大象传媒

Back when he was studying English at UEA, Peter J Conradi had a friend who ran the student literary society, organizing writers to come to Norwich and speak. He went along to a meeting and the speaker there changed the whole course of his life. The writer was Iris Murdoch. She became a friend, and he became 鈥� in his words 鈥� her 鈥渄isciple鈥�, and eventually her biographer. And then Peter and his partner, Jim O鈥橬eill, spent eight months caring for Iris at the end of her life, as Alzheimer's took hold 鈥� they listened to a lot of music together. Peter has spent his career as an English Professor at the University of Kingston and his biography of Iris Murdoch is not his only book: he鈥檚 also written about Dostoevsky, John Fowles, and Angus Wilson; about grief, about becoming a Buddhist, and about dogs.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Peter discusses the extraordinary power Iris Murdoch exerted over all her friends and lovers, and her secretiveness, so that each would be kept in a separate compartment. He remembers how she kept singing and dancing right up to the end. And he reveals his own mental health struggles, and how Buddhism has helped him. Music choices include Strauss, Bartok, Bach, Britten鈥檚 War Requiem, and the Anthem by Leonard Cohen that contains the famous words 鈥淭here is a crack in everything, that鈥檚 how the light gets in.鈥�

A Loftus Media production for 大象传媒 Radio 3
Produced by Elizabeth Burke