The art hasn’t been lost over here. Here’s a passage, again from this week’s Private Eye, on the novels of Iris Murdoch:
Murdoch’s fictional project was essentially to borrow plots from Shakespeare and ideas from Plato and meld them together as novels. Characters with names like Lysander Prosper chat and shag on islands or at large country houses, arguing over whether perfect love or essential goodness is achievable until, after a few hints of the supernatural, the plot is resolved in an exaggerated flurry of deaths or marriages. It’s like A.S. Byatt without the jokes.
The Dish 