Iris Murdoch’s husband, John Bailey, provides witness to Murdoch’s brilliant writing and academic life. Murdoch, the author of The sea, the sea (Booker prize 1987), Under the Net, The Severed Head, and other recognized novels and philosophic works, suffered from Alzheimer’s in her later years. Bailey’s portrait of his wife is tender, loving, and insightful both into the person Iris and also into the disease which diminished her.