Peter J. Conradi

Professor Emeritus of English Peter J Conradi

Drawing on hundreds of interviews, letters, and diaries, an authorized biography of the critically acclaimed philosopher and novelist traces her personal life and literary and philosophical career, from her student days at Oxford, through her marriage to John Bayley, to Murdoch's remarkable influence on literary England, from 1940 to the present day.

A Life

Iris Murdoch

Traces the life and career of the philosopher and novelist, from her student days at Oxford, through her marriage to John Bayley, to Murdoch's influence on literary England, from 1940 to the present day.

The Life of Iris Murdoch

Iris

The Saint and the Artist

A full and revealing biography of one of the century’s greatest English writers and an icon to a generation.

Iris Murdoch: A Life: The Authorized Biography

Peter Conradi

An examination of Dostoevsky's understanding of psychological doubleness. Referring to the four major novels, the author illustrates how Dostoevsky's understanding of suffering, guilt, repentance, paranoia and religious terrors has proved relevant in today's unbelieving age.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

How do you 'prepare' for bereavement? Religious faith can help, as can ritualised codes of dress and behaviour that recognise different stages of mourning. But many of us feel singularly unprepared when we lose someone. No one 'theory' can sooth the bereaved, precisely because grief so strips us naked and profoundly wounds us. Nothing pre-cooked helps. No quick fix, no one-shot deal. In this inspirational book, Peter J Conradi draws on literature, history and philosophy to present a broad array of different voices and perspectives on grief. His carefully chosen stories, excerpts and poems offer wisdom and consolation, but they also make us think, break down taboos and sometimes even find humour and light amidst the painful, bewildering reality of death. Everyone's experience of grief is different, but reading of the myriad different ways in which others have approached it can, while not necessarily easing our grief, certainly help us feel less alone.

Voices through the ages on how to manage death and loss

On Grief

Tin Tin’s Snowy, Odysseus’s Argos, Darwin’s Polly, Mary Queen of Scots’s 22 lap-dogs, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Flush... Behind every great man or woman is a dog. A Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs is a rich compendium of the world’s most significant and beloved dogs. Embracing the intriguing and the provocative, the essential and the trivial, Peter J. Conradi forays into history, literature and personal anecdotes to unearth a treasure trove of canine characters. Discover the stories behind Karl Marx's and his daughter's Dogberry Club; the lapdogs who were secreted in first-class cabins on the Titanic and how they survived; Edinburgh’s Greyfriars Bobby who stayed by his master’s grave for 14 years; and the one undisputed fact about Shakespeare – his singular dislike for dogs. A Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs is a wonderful and witty homage to man’s most faithful friend.

A Dictionary of Interesting and Important Dogs

It often takes a crisis to see what a life's shape has been, to learn what really matters. For Peter J. Conradi, acclaimed biographer of Iris Murdoch, the moment came in 1982. This is his account of the life-journey on which he subsequently embarked; a self-help book for cynics, it makes clear that going Buddhist is neither a quick fix nor a one-shot deal. Drawing on his conversations with Murdoch, and the remarkable letters they exchanged, Conradi seeks to explain the beauty of Buddhism--a religion increasingly relevant to Westerners. Peter Conradi's recent books include the widely hailed Iris Murdoch: A Life.

Panic and Emptiness, the Buddha and Me

Going Buddhist

These never before published writings comprise Iris Murdoch's passionate wartime correspondence with two early intimates: the poet Frank Thompson, brother of the historian E.P. Thompson, who was killed in 1944, and David Hicks, with whom she had a dramatic affair, engagement, and breakup. It also includes the journal that Murdoch kept as a touring actress during August of 1939. The selection sheds new light on a brilliant young mind ("sharp and polished as a sword" as Frances Wilson describes it), while painting a vivid picture of life during the Second World War.

Letters and Diaries, 1939-1945

Iris Murdoch, A Writer at War

Published to coincide with his major biography of Iris Murdoch, Peter Conradi’s acclaimed critical appreciation of her work is reissued in a fully revised and updated edition, with a foreword by John Bayley.

The Saint and Artist: A Study of the Fiction of Iris Murdoch

Analyzes the novels of the British writer, looks at how they make use of genre conventions, and assess Fowles place in modern literature

John Fowles

Sir Angus Wilson shot to fame in the late 1940's - his first stories were greeted by Sean O'Faolain and Evelyn Waugh alike with delight. He was championed at once as an odd realist providing new social maps of post-war England - V S Pritchett was to see him as revising the conventional picture of English Character, and recovering "broadness" without losing humanity. He has many faces as a writer. If he inherits the comic Dickensian novel of social depth and density, he also marries this to a recognisably modern anxiety and insecurity about the 'self'. Wilson's major books often concern 'creative breakdown': they depict people who undergo a crisis and/or collapse of self-belief, and then have to find the courage to invent themselves anew.

Angus Wilson

An untold story of love, idealism and courage in the Second World War

The Making of Frank Thompson

A Very English Hero

Dame Iris Murdoch has played a major role in English life and letter for nearly half a century. As A.S. Byatt notes, she is absolutely central to our culture. As a novelist, as a thinker, and as a private individual, her life has significance for our age. There is a recognizable Murdoch world, and the adjective Murdochian has entered the language to describe situations where a small group of people interract intricately and strangely.

Peter J. Conradi

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