How Irish was Iris? The life and times of the first Irish-born Booker Prize-winner

From the Irish Times: 

Iris Murdoch: ‘Being a woman is like being Irish’, one of her characters said.

The first Irish-born writer to win the Booker Prize was Iris Murdoch, the centenary of whose birth occurs on July 15th, but how Irish she was or considered herself to be has been the subject of some debate.

Nevertheless, her friend and biographer Peter Conradi argued that her Irishness was important to her and another friend, Paul Levy, wrote in the Independent last year that she “always felt passionately Irish but she also felt that it was possible at the same time to be British”.

read more here @ Irish Times