She taught those lucky enough to be her friends vital lessons about how to live – and the efficacy of prayer

Before I explore what I owe to Iris Murdoch, it might be a good idea to explain the series of chances which led to my meeting her.

By the time I was 18, I had decided that I did not want to go to Cambridge, though my father, most improperly, had arranged a place for me there with a history don who was one of his friends – Jack Plumb. It seemed worth seeing if I could become a painter, and I had got into Central St Martin’s School of Art – much to my poor father’s horror. He had not been to university himself, and art school, with a lot of scruffs, in the Year of Revolutions, 1968, was an appalling prospect, as far as he was concerned. He approached my English teacher, Tim Tosswill, who came up with an alternative plan.

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