Murdoch intimidates not because she is so good or so prolific a writer but because she is also a working philosopher. One feels there must be some metaphysical system that explains the adultery and musical beds, the overcharged emotional atmospheres and meticulously developed characters of the novels. It seems inconceivable that this interpreter of Plato and Sartre, apparently cloistered behind the walls of Oxford scholarship and respectability, could know so scandalously much about the lusts and passions of ordinary folk. Murdoch the philosopher writes about freedom and moral choice; Murdoch the novelist is a comic genius, a goat-footed enchantress beckoning the reader to a toot in the pubs of literature for some good gossip and a heart-to-heart talk about the eternal verities.

Like all her novels, Nuns and Soldiers is about love,… the love that Murdoch calls "the real, the indubitable and authoritative Eros: that unmistakable seismic shock...