BACK IN 1988 Richard Cohen - then an editor at Hutchinson - was looking around for someone to write a biography of Iris Murdoch. Since it was obviously going to be done anyway, she and her husband John Bayley decided that A N Wilson was the person to do it.

Wilson himself was uncertain. He did not want to write as the 'tame friend', with his subject breathing down hs neck. Also, she was something of a heroine and a role model to him, and he dd not know what he would find. He did some preliminary research; but she,