
Professor John Bayley CBE, FBA, FRSL was a British literary critic and writer. Bayley was born in Lahore, British India, and educated at Eton, where he studied under G. W. Lyttelton, who also taught Aldous Huxley, J.B.S. Haldane, George Orwell and Cyril Connolly. After leaving Eton, he went on to take a degree at New College, Oxford. From 1974 to 1992, Bayley was Warton Professor of English at Oxford. He is also a novelist and writes literary criticism for several newspapers. He edited Henry James' The Wings of the Dove and a two-volume selection of James' short stories. From 1956 until her death in 1999, he was married to the writer Dame Iris Murdoch. When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, he wrote the book Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch, which was made into the 2001 film Iris by Richard Eyre. In this film, Bayley was portrayed in his early years by Hugh Bonneville, and in his later years by Jim Broadbent, who won an Oscar for the performance. After Murdoch's death he married Audi Villers, a family friend. He was awarded the CBE in 1999.
Series
Books

The Order of Battle at Trafalgar and Other Essays
1987

In Another Country
1986

Widower's House
2001

Russian Short Stories
1992

Iris
A Memoir of Iris Murdoch
1998

Iris and Her Friends
1999

Foodists
Writing About Eating from the London Review of Books
2023

Tolstoy and the Novel
1966

The Red Hat
1998

The Power of Delight
A Lifetime in Literature
2005

