Iris Murdoch artworks from secret room go on display – including self-portrait

<p>Second world war paintings and sketches show novelist ‘engaging with her world in a new light’</p><p>For decades, they lay in a secret room in her attic gathering dust. Now, newly discovered artworks by the Booker prize-winning author Iris Murdoch – including the only self-portrait she is known to have painted, four surrealist landscape paintings and three sketches of female nudes – will go on display for the first time on Friday.</p><p>The artworks were created at the start of the second world war when Murdoch was a student at Oxford. They expose her early interest in surrealism and fascination with the naked female form.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/aug/14/iris-murdoch-artworks-secret-room-self-portrait-novelist">Continue reading...</a>