Philosophy and life are united, the book seems to be saying: not only by default, but as upbringing; as education. each of this book’s subjects produced work that, in seeking to reconnect ‘human life, action and perception’ with morality, remains vitally relevant. It is true that the authors only refer to the women as Iris, Mary, Elizabeth, and Philippa, but they are inconsistent with the men and other women, at one point even referring to Rousseau as ‘Jean-Jacques’ weirdly enough. But her Austrian adventure had been cut short: she had arrived in the capital a fortnight before the country ceased to exist.

In conclusion, the book would have benefited from more psychological depth to better understand its subjects' personalities and motivations. The book is a unique and compelling document for those who know only the slim outlines of these women’s lives and works. There is also something to be said about the tone of a piece that refers to the key women with first names, but the men with last names. But the devotion of the fellows to scholarship and to the success of their students was uncompromising. The fight had been hard won and many in the wider community, including many women, remained unconvinced.

The book offers a wonderful peak into the lives of four women at Oxford during the second world war and after. This book ends in 1956 with Elizabeth’s protest against Oxford’s awarding an honorary degree to former president Truman. I did not find the Truman honorary degree story that bookends the text particularly helpful though it was a significant event in Elizabeth Anscombe’s life. For those interested in the history of philosophy most of this book is as interesting and engaging as anything on the market. Reports of the atrocities of Nazi death camps as well as the use of atomic bombs against Japan further galvanized the four women to find an objective basis for saying why such actions are wrong.

The narrative is of four brilliant women finding their voices, opposing received wisdom, and developing an alternative picture of human beings and their place in the world . And describing the conversations, Elizabeth, Iris, Mary and Philippa had about Mary Glover‘s paper, “Obligation and value.In their unfashionable view that it is possible, as Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman put it, to ‘use [the] language of morals and speak of objective moral truth’, and their conviction that human beings are ‘social, creative, curious, spiritual’ creatures rather than mere ‘efficient calculating machines’, the four heroines of this book were untimely. They couldn’t – Professor Jerusalem was an Austrian citizen – and she cried all the way through the interview. Scenes such as Mary and Iris in wartime London eating their fish-paste sandwiches in butterfly-filled, London squares because the mass flight of birds from the bombing has allowed caterpillars to thrive; Iris’s later travels and meetings with Sartre; Elizabeth’s tangles with Wittgenstein at Cambridge. Mrs Z had another tutee that year, on whom she might well have risked a forecast, Miss Iris Murdoch.