To some extent, we have lost the positive side of that now with our busy, materialistic 21st century world of superficiality, our overly competitive society where cooperation has been sacrificed for boastful procrastinations and gloss. Yet the downside of that time, was that there was scope for a lot of self-indulgence and pretentiousness amongst the search for deeper meanings. Such philosophical and esoteric musings are at the core of this book. There are both supremely tragic and comedic events, yet we have a journey running though the novel. In many ways it is Charles's journey to becoming more self-aware, and beginning to stop his self-delusions, and gain a moral compass. Very near the end, he muses, Without really gauging how Hartley feels about him, Charles becomes obsessed with reviving their past relationship—or, at least, his idealized version of it. His endeavor is sidelined by several of his past lovers, who incessantly visit him. At the same time, Hartley is threatened by her emotionally abusive husband, and her son, Titus. Titus runs away when family tensions become too difficult. Though part of Hartley wants to end her marriage, she has mixed feelings about trying to return to an inaccessible, innocent, and naive past. When she rebuffs Charles, he reacts desperately, shutting her in his house to forcibly isolate her from her other life. Hartley nearly suffers a psychotic break and begs Charles to let her go. After her repeated requests, he complies. This gives us the measure of the man; faddish and particular to the point of eccentricity. And given subsequent events in the novel, it is probably important for the author to get the reader on Charles's side, to enjoy his little foibles and forgive him what appears to be fanciful and conceited notions about himself. Increasingly the reader becomes less aware that the novel is a journal, as it becomes a chronicle of the unfolding events. At each point the sea becomes more symbolic, both a portent and metaphor for both the action and the relationships. Take this powerful passage, which comes about three quarters of the way through the novel when arguably the most tragic event has taken place, and the viewpoint character is in despair, Charles Arrowby, leading light of England’s theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.

In that lowness, Murdoch found the subject of her novels, each to a greater or lesser degree peopled by delusionals and lunatics. Often, those who are compelled by the attempt to be good are the most dangerous, particularly when they have covered themselves in the cloak of mysticism, a recurring trope that allows Murdoch to study – in common with Muriel Spark – the devastating power of charisma. And I loved the wilful ridiculousness of it all. The author must have had a great deal of fun purposely amalgamating farce and improbability with high culture. The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch (1919 – 1999) was the prolific British author’s nineteenth novel. Following is a review and analysis from 1978, the year in which it was published.Do Iris Murdoch’s novels still matter to people? Or, after the high-water mark of her Booker-winning 1978 novel, The Sea , The Sea, and a late period of longer, more philosophically abstruse books, did her work collapse into her biography – the jumble of love affairs, absurdly messy kitchens and Alzheimer’s disease that were dramatised by Kate Winslet and Judi Dench in the 2001 film of her life? And, once the attention paid to her life had abated, had contemporary fiction simply moved on?

I hate the falsity of ‘grand’ dinner parties where, amid much kissing, there is the appearance of intimacy where there is really none.” She did not have to join my grand intimidating alien world. To wed his beggar maid the king would, and how gladly, become a beggar too. The vision of that healing humility would henceforth be my guide. This was indeed the very condition of her freedom, why had I not seen this before? I would at last see her face changing. It was, I found, a part of my thought of the future that when she was with me Hartley would actually regain much of her old beauty: like a prisoner released from a labour camp who at first looks old, but then with freedom and rest and good food soon becomes young again.” guzzling large quantities of expensive, pretentious, often mediocre food in public places was not only immoral, unhealthy and unaesthetic, but also unpleasurable. Later my guests were offered simple chez moi. What is more delicious than fresh hot buttered toast, with or without the addition of bloater paste? Or plain boiled onions with a little corned beef if desired?" Once more I find I have been economical with the truth, but this time I shall tell all. I promise. Hartley was my childhood love. We were inseparable. A working class Romeo and Juliet. And then she left me when I went to drama school. No reason, no explanation. She left me heart-broken. Perhaps it was because of her I became the thespian I am, but that's another story. Here she was again. Mysteriously turning up again after 50 years, living in the very same village as me. Charles Arrowby, an eminent theatre artiste in his sixties, has retired to Shruff End, a ‘seaside paradise’ he owned, to write a memoir and supposedly to ‘repent of a life of egotism.’ His intended subject is his love affair with Clement Makin, a deceased, older actress and mistress who has shaped his life both professionally and personally. Hailed in the popular press as a ‘tyrant ‘, a ‘tartar’, and a ‘power-crazed monster', Charles is worshipped by the actors and actresses whose career he makes or breaks but who both curiously love and fear him. Right from the beginning, Charles’ writing plans are haplessly and irrevocably derailed. He let on that ‘something happened which was so extraordinary and so horrible that I cannot bring myself to describe it even now after an interval of time...’ The memoir that Charles ends up writing is this book we are reading. It is an account of his life, in particular, his obsessive pursuit of a childhood love that encapsulates for him an ideal so pure that nothing must stand in the way of its resurrection.The hero, Charles Arrowby, is a retired and celebrated theatre director and, it goes almost without saying, a sentimental cynic and a monster of egotism. A four-part adaptation of The Sea, The Sea by Richard Crane, directed by Faynia Williams appeared as the Classic Serial on BBC Radio 3 in 1993. The actors included John Wood as Charles Arrowby, Joyce Redman as Hartley Fitch, with Siân Phillips, Sam Crane& Peter Kelly. Episode 3 included an interview with Iris Murdoch. Much of the action is slow, the drama somewhat artificial -- though admittedly reasonably done by the stage-managing Arrowby, who once wrote plays, who achieved fame for his direction. His personal sorcery suddenly fails to work, the forces of necessity (chaos, the amorphous surrounding sea) take over, in one of those manic, violent, coincidental climaxes that leave the characters (and the reader) breathless. Death, along with marriage, is an inevitable touchstone of reality for Murdoch. Here's the first thing I love about The Sea, The Sea: its title. Isn't it wonderful? Imagine how boring it would have looked on a shelf if it had just been called "The Sea." But with that profoundly simple decision to repeat itself, it suddenly drips horror and madness and obsession. It's just brilliant. Almost makes me wish Emily Bronte had called her book "The Moor, The Moor."