The Sandcastle (novel) - The Title

The Title

There is only one reference to a 'sandcastle' in the book. From Iris Murdoch's The Sandcastle, Chapter Five:

"I can recall, as a child, seeing pictures in English children's books of boys and girls playing on the sand and making sandcastles – and I tried to play on my sand. But a Mediterranean beach is not a place for playing on. It is dirty and very dry. The tides never wash the sand or make it firm. When I tried to make a sandcastle, the sand would just run away between my fingers. It was too dry to hold together. And even as I poured sea water over it, the sun would dry it up at once."


Works by Iris Murdoch
Novels
  • Under the Net (1954)
  • The Flight from the Enchanter (1956)
  • The Sandcastle (1957)
  • The Bell (1958)
  • A Severed Head (1961)
  • An Unofficial Rose (1962)
  • The Unicorn (1963)
  • The Italian Girl (1964)
  • The Red and the Green (1965)
  • The Time of the Angels (1966)
  • The Nice and the Good (1968)
  • Bruno's Dream (1969)
  • A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970)
  • An Accidental Man (1971)
  • The Black Prince (1973)
  • The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974)
  • A Word Child (1975)
  • Henry and Cato (1976)
  • The Sea, the Sea (1978)
  • Nuns and Soldiers (1980)
  • The Philosopher's Pupil (1983)
  • The Good Apprentice (1985)
  • The Book and the Brotherhood (1987)
  • The Message to the Planet (1989)
  • The Green Knight (1993)
  • Jackson's Dilemma (1995)
Short stories
  • "Something Special" (1957)
Plays
  • A Severed Head (with J. B. Priestley, 1964)
  • The Italian Girl (with James Saunders, 1969)
  • The Three Arrows & the Servants and the Snow (1973)
  • The Servants (1980)
  • Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues (1986)
  • The Black Prince (1987)
Poetry
  • A Year of Birds (1978, rev. 1984)
  • Poems by Iris Murdoch (1997)
Philosophy
  • Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953)
  • The Sovereignty of Good (1970)
  • The Fire and the Sun (1977)
  • Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992)
  • Existentialists and Mystics (1997)

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