John Oliver Bayley (27 March 1925 – 12 January 2015) was a British academic, literary critic and writer.
Bayley enlisted in the British Army during World War II, serving in the Grenadier Guards where he wound up in postwar Germany.
The choice of these essays and his scholarly articles from 1962 to 2002 were selected by the literary editor of The New Yorker, Leo Carey, and published as The Power of Delight: A Lifetime in Literature.
From 1956 until her death in 1999, he was married to the philosopher and novelist Dame Iris Murdoch who said "that her husband was perhaps 'the greatest critic since Coleridge'.
[9] Jim Broadbent won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as John Bayley in the 2001 film Iris.