Fairly Honourable Defeat

ltbgtIris Murdochltbgt was born in Dublin in 1919 She read Classics at Somerville College Oxford and after working in the Treasury and abroad was awarded a research studentship in Philosophy at Newnham College Cambridge In 1948 she returned to Oxford as fellow and tutor at St Annes College and later taught at the Royal College of Art Until her death in 1999 she lived in Oxford with her husband the academic and critic John Bayley She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987 and in the 1997 P