The Iris Trilogy 'Iris, ', 'Iris and the Friends', 'Widower's House

This volume brings together John Bayley's books dedicated to the memory of his wife, Iris Murdoch. Bayley's account of his long and loving marriage to the great novelist Iris takes us from their love affair's comical beginnings in Oxford in the early 50s (Bayley courted Iris on account of her unchallenging plain looks and their first date consisted of a revolting dinner followed by a disastrous dance when Iris sprained her ankle) through its slow and painful closure when Iris developed Alzheimer's 40 years later, to a searching analysis of the condition of bereavement and how he built a life for himself after Iris's death. As Bayley charts the gradual dissolution of Iris's remarkable intellect side by side with the detail of their gloriously eccentric and profoundly satisfying life together, what emerges is the complex portrait of an enigmatic and brilliant woman and of a marriage of quite extraordinary, unforced happiness, and an insight into the mysterious symbolism of Iris Murdoch's novels.