Iris Vivienne Morley was an English historian, writer and journalist.

Morley was born at Carshalton

Carshalton

Carshalton is a suburban area of the London Borough of Sutton, England. It is located 10 miles south-southwest of Charing Cross, situated in the valley of the River Wandle, one of the sources of which is Carshalton Ponds in the centre of the village. The combined population of the five wards...

, Surrey, the daughter of Colonel Lyddon Charteris Morley CBE and Gladys Vivienne Charteris Braddell. She married Ronald Gordon Coates of the Devonshire Regiment on 10 January 1929. They were divorced in 1934 and she married Alaric Jacob

Alaric Jacob

Harold Alaric Jacob was an English writer and journalist. He was Reuters correspondent in Washington in the 1930s, and a war correspondent during World War II in North Africa, Burma and Moscow.-Early life:...

 on 2 August 1934.

With Jacob she went to America where he was a foreign correspondent, and they stayed there until the beginning of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. During the war, she wrote her trilogy of historical novels - Cry Treason (1940), We Stood For Freedom (1941) and The Mighty Years (1943) - with James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, and William III, as central characters. Jacob was away for two years at this time reporting from various war zones.

She accompanied her husband to Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 in January 1944 and wrote her work Soviet Ballet published in 1945. Morley was a journalist for The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

and the Yorkshire Post

Yorkshire Post

The Yorkshire Post is a daily broadsheet newspaper, published in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England by Yorkshire Post Newspapers, a company owned by Johnston Press...

. She became a Communist and her ideas strongly influenced her husband. She appears in Jacob's book Scenes from a Bourgeois Life

Scenes from a Bourgeois Life

Scenes from a Bourgeois Life is an autobiographical novel by the British author Alaric Jacob, first published in 1949.-Summary:The book is an apologia for the paradoxes and anomalies of the author's own career. Jacob had drifted into journalism and become a Reuter's correspondent, first in London...

published in 1949 as Miranda Ireton.

That same year, she and her husband were included on Orwell's list

Orwell's list

Orwell's list, prepared in 1949 by the English author George Orwell, shortly before he died, comprises names of notable writers and other individuals he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the Information Research Department's anti-communist propaganda activities.-Background:The...

 of people he considered unsuitable to be authors for the Information Research Department

Information Research Department

The Information Research Department, founded in 1948 by Christopher Mayhew MP, was a department of the British Foreign Office set up to counter Russian propaganda and infiltration, particularly amongst the western labour movement....

. This list was prepared in March 1949 by George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

 for his friend Celia Kirwan at the IRD, a propaganda unit set up at the Foreign Office by the Labour government.

In August 1948, Jacob had joined the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 monitoring service at Caversham, but in February 1951 he was "suddenly refused establishment rights, which meant he would receive no pension." By this time Jacob and his wife were separated but his establishment and pension rights were only restored shortly after Iris Morley died in 1953.

Jacob and Morley had a daughter. After her death he married the actress Kathleen Byron

Kathleen Byron

Kathleen Byron was a British actress of stage, screen and television.-Early life:Byron was born Kathleen Elizabeth Fell in West Ham – now in the London Borough of Newham...

.

Publications

• The Proud Paladin New York: William Morrow & Co, 1936
• Cry Treason London: Peter Davies, 1940
• We Stood for Freedom New York: William Morrow and Co, 1942
• The Mighty Years London: Peter Davies, 1943
• Soviet Ballet London: Collins, 1945
• Nothing but Propaganda London: Peter Davies, 1946
• Not Without Fantasy London: Peter Davies, 1947
• The Rose and the Star In collaboration with Phyllis Manchester 1949
• The Rack London: Peter Davies, 1952
• A Thousand Lives London: Andre Deutsch