"Destroy this and all letters. And keep your mouth shut". This collection of Iris Murdoch´s most interesting and revealing letters gives us a living portrait of one of the twentieth century´s greatest writers and thinkers. The letters show a great mind at work - we see the young Murdoch grappling with philosophical questions, as well as feeling her anguish when a novel obstinately refuses to come together. They uncover Murdoch´s famed personal life, the subject of much speculation, in all its intriguing complexity, and her penchant for living beyond the bounds of social acceptability. We also begin to see the ´real life material´ that fed into her fiction, despite her claims that her fiction never drew on reality. Above all we see the accumulation of life - intimate, irreverent, fiercely engaged with the world - in this extraordinary collection of letters.