Iris Murdoch was one of the best loved and most respected British writers of the second half of the twentieth century. A novelist and philosopher, she could uniquely appeal to both an academic and a popular audience. Her wild emotional life, her many love-affairs, her war work with UNRRA, her move from youthful communism to Thatcherism, her later life as a secular saint beloved for her gentle spirituality, her sad decline from Alzheimer's disease - all these events are detailed in this accessible chronology, which charts the passage of a remarkable life and provides fresh insight into Murdoch's novels.