1957 Iris Murdoch and T. R. Fyvel Interview Typescript

Description

Original Source, Very Scarce

A unique typescript of a 1957 interview with Iris Murdoch, produced by the BBC European Division for the programme 'Meeting Writers'. 

Subtitled 'No. 5: Iris Murdoch by T. R. Fyvel', we have not found any evidence that this interview was ever broadcast either on television or radio.

The interviewer, T. R. Fyvel, was a writer, journalist and literary editor. He was active in the Zionist movement, and worked with Golda Meir.

In the interview, Murdoch discusses her career at Oxford University. She expresses her process of novel writing with 'I do believe that wisdom comes from silence and not from making haste'.

In discussing the characters she depicts, she says 'I like and approve of eccentric and unsettled people [...] I like to portray eccentric people, and people who are misunderstood and who give shocks'.

She names her favourite novelists as 'Henry James, Conrad, Proust, and Emily Bronte'.

While the date of the interview being is typed as 4.2.47, a later annotation corrects this as being actually from 1957, via clues within the text and the statement that Murdoch was in her mid thirties, and recently married, at the time of the interview.

These four double-sided leaves are loosely inserted in a brown envelope with a handwritten label reading 'Murdoch Interview'.

A unique early interview with Murdoch, offering insight into the mind and attitude of the celebrated novelist.