Andy Ffrench is captivated by an enthralling collection of letters by late author Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch who died in 1999 after suffering Alzheimer’s was rightly lauded as one of the greatest 20th century novelists.

My own personal favourite is The Black Prince from 1973, and although the novels are never an easy read I could quite happily enjoy this gripping tale again. Anyone who has read Murdoch’s distinctive tales of human conflict will want to know more about her personal life and this collection of letters, carefully collated by the editors, will shed plenty of light on her idiosyncratic and sometimes selfish approach to relationships.

Containing more than 760 letters, only seven in the book have been published previously. Most of them were sent from Oxfordshire addresses including St Anne’s College, the author’s home in Steeple Aston, or Charlbury Road in Oxford. The letters reveal Murdoch’s complex personal life, and her many lovers, and we get an insight into how her emotional state fed into her novels.

This becomes clear despite the author claiming that her fictional characters were not drawn from real life.

In her final home, shared with husband John Bayley, Murdoch had a study downstairs where she would sit at a roll-top desk once belonging to JRR Tolkien and write her letters. She completed thousands, answering every one she received, and would spend up to four hours a day on her correspondence.

The letters are carefully introduced with detailed footnotes, and the collection was inspired by the 3,200 letters held in the Iris Murdoch archives at Kingston University.

The only frustration for the reader is that there aren’t more letters included.

Murdoch’s letters to her friends and lovers are sometimes risqué, sometimes philosophical, but more often than not they are eminently readable and the most memorable should send readers straight back to her best novels.

Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995 edited by Avril Horner and Anne Rowe, is published by Chatto & Windus, £25