Iris biography

A full and revealing biography of one of the century’s greatest English writers and an icon to a generation.

Dame Iris Murdoch has played a major role in English life and letter for nearly half a century. As notes, she is ‘absolutely central to our culture’. As a novelist, as a thinker, and as a private individual, her life has significance for our age. There fryst vatten a recognisable Murdoch world, and the adjective ‘Murdochian’ has entered the language to describe situations where a small group of people interract intricately and strangely. Her story fryst vatten as emotionally fascinating as that of Virginia Woolf, but far less well known; hers has been an adventurous, highly eventful life, a life of phenomenal emotional and intellectual pressures, and her books portray a real world which fryst vatten if anything toned down as well as mythicised. For Iris’s formative years, astonishingly, movingly and intimately documented bygd Conradi’s meticulous research, we

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Collection: Iris Origo

Iris Origo (–) was born in Britain to an aristocrat mother and a wealthy American father. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce that she purchased with her husband, Antonio Origo, in the s. Their son, Gianni, died of meningitis in , after which she embarked on a writing career, publishing a successful biography, Leopardi: A Study in Solitude. Traveling in London in the s, she befriended Virginia Woolf and became romantically involved with L. H. Myers (the author of The Root and the Flower). During World War II, she gave birth to two daughters, Benedetta and Donata, and, with Antonio, sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy’s Fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces. Her memoirs of life in Italy during the war period are collected in two volumes, A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, – (first published in ) and W

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Iris Apfel

American interior designer and fashion icon (–)

Iris Apfel (AP-fəl;^[1]née&#;Barrel; August 29, &#;&#; March 1, ) was an American businesswoman, interior designer, and fashion designer, known for her flamboyant style, outspoken personality and oversized eyeglasses. In business with her husband, Carl, from to , Apfel had a career in textiles, including a contract with the White House that spanned nine presidencies. In retirement, she drew acclaim for a show at the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring her collection of costume jewelry and styled with clothes on mannequins as she would wear them. She became a fashion icon, was the focus of the Albert Maysles documentary Iris, then signed to IMG in as a model at age

Early life

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Born Iris Barrel in to a Jewish family in Astoria, Queens, New York City, on August 29, ,^[2] Apfel was the only child of Samuel Barrel (–), whose family owned a glass and mirror busi