Abstract

The second chapter of this anthology opens with a memoir, ‘“Of Science and Light”: Learning with Iris Murdoch’, written in 1998 by the late Stephen Medcalf, who, with Anthony Nuttall, had tutorials with Murdoch at St Anne’s College, Oxford, in 1959. (We are grateful for the kind permission of his literary executor, Brian Cummings, to edit and publish this essay which was originally written for a proposed festschrift in 1999 which did not come to pass.) Medcalf paints a vivid picture of Murdoch as a teacher and a thinker, as he recalls engaging in discussion with her about imagery and consciousness. He posits a possible link between her work—specifically The Sandcastle (1957)—and the novels of Charles Williams, although Murdoch was not aware of any such connection, and he gives a critical account of the early novels written around the period in which he knew her and John Bayley. Particularly moving is Medcalf’s recollection of noticing at a Merton College dinner that ‘whenever either thought of something that would interest the other and turned to him or her, their faces were so radiant that they looked like beings not of earth but of light’ (p. 20). This portrait adds another layer of richness to the picture of Iris Murdoch’s life and personality being formed not only by biographies but also by the memoir-writing created by those who knew her. We are glad to include Medcalf’s contribution posthumously in this collage of memories.