Ian Patterson, author of Books: A Manifesto , returns to Backlisted for a joyful discussion of Iris Murdoch and her sixteenth novel The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), the winner of the Whitbread literary award for fiction. For reasons that will be obvious, the talk soon turns to other novels by Murdoch, including The Bell (1958), The Black Prince (1973), The Sea, the Sea (1978) and The Green Knight (1993), plus the film adaptations of A Severed Head (1961) and the unknown book that spawned erotic thriller Love Standing Up (1985). We listen to interview clips from the archive and excerpts from her remarkable and prescient speech ‘Art and Tyranny’ (1972). The author was considered to be a literary titan in her lifetime. But where does her reputation stand in 2026? Was Murdoch a philosopher who wrote novels, a novelist who wrote philosophy, a pioneer of wild swimming, or a unique combination of the three? This is a playful and wide-ranging conversation between Ian, Una, Andy and Nicky, with articulate individuals exchanging sophisticated ideas in a manner similar to, yet entirely unlike, characters in an Iris Murdoch novel. We hope you enjoy it just as much as we did.

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The Sacred and Profane Love Machine by Iris Murdoch