Peter J Conradi
Michael Berkeleyâs guest is biographer Peter J Conradi. With music by Schubert, Bach, Britten and Leonard Cohen.
Back when he was studying English at UEA, Peter J Conradi had a friend who ran the student literary society, organizing writers to come to Norwich and speak. He went along to a meeting and the speaker there changed the whole course of his life. The writer was Iris Murdoch. She became a friend, and he became â in his words â her âdiscipleâ, and eventually her biographer. And then Peter and his partner, Jim OâNeill, spent eight months caring for Iris at the end of her life, as Alzheimer's took hold â they listened to a lot of music together. Peter has spent his career as an English Professor at the University of Kingston and his biography of Iris Murdoch is not his only book: heâs also written about Dostoevsky, John Fowles, and Angus Wilson; about grief, about becoming a Buddhist, and about dogs.
In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Peter discusses the extraordinary power Iris Murdoch exerted over all her friends and lovers, and her secretiveness, so that each would be kept in a separate compartment. He remembers how she kept singing and dancing right up to the end. And he reveals his own mental health struggles, and how Buddhism has helped him. Music choices include Strauss, Bartok, Bach, Brittenâs War Requiem, and the Anthem by Leonard Cohen that contains the famous words âThere is a crack in everything, thatâs how the light gets in.â
A Loftus Media production for ±«Óătv Radio 3
Produced by Elizabeth Burke
Last on
Music Played
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Benjamin Britten
Libera me (War Requiem)
Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Benjamin Britten. -
Richard Strauss
Marie Theres' (Rosenkavalier, Act III)
Orchestra: Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Conductor: Colin Davis. -
BĂ©la BartĂłk
Concerto for orchestra (4th mvt: Intermezzo interrotto
Orchestra: Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Susanna MĂ€lkki. -
Leonard Cohen
Anthem
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Sergey Prokofiev
Juliet's Death (Romeo and Juliet)
Orchestra: Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Conductor: Mark Ermler. -
Johann Sebastian Bach
Prelude (Cello Suite no.1 in G)
Performer: YoâYo Ma. -
Franz Schubert
String Quintet in C (2nd mvt: Adagio)
Performer: Isaac Stern. Performer: Alexander Schneider. Performer: Milton Katims. Performer: Pau Casals. Performer: Paul Tortelier.
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