PETER J. CONRADI became interested in Frank Thompson while researching his critically acclaimed Iris Murdoch: A Life, the authorised biography, and A Writer at War: The Letters and Diaries of Iris Murdoch, 1938–1946, which includes her correspondence with Frank. His critical studies of Dostoevsky, Angus Wilson and John Fowles were followed, more recently, by Going Buddhist and At the Bright Hem of God. He lives in London and Radnorshire where he gardens, walks, edits the Radnorshire Transactions and chairs the Bleddfa Trust. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011.