Iris Murdoch – “The Message to the Planet” (28 December 2018) As in “The Book and the Brotherhood”, we have another loose group of friends and their friends who met at university (or art college), only this time one of them is apparently dying, believing himself cursed by Marcus Vallar, a sort of Crimond-in-overdrive who turned his hand to maths and painting then vanished. But one of the friends has tracked him down and wants to bring him to the house where Jack, successful painter and trying to introduce his latest mistress into his house, is waited on by the ever-patient Franca, the worm who will never turn. Will Marcus return an