Nothing about Iris Murdoch - and certainly not the gleeful, Augean squalor of her home life in Oxford - was remotely glamorous. But last night the cream of Britain's acting aristocracy turned out in Mayfair, central London, to see a film about the last heart-rending days of her life.

Iris, directed by Richard Eyre, who also lost his mother to Alzheimer's disease, has already attracted Golden Globe nominations for its stars Dame Judi Dench and Kate Winslet, who play the old and young writer of The Bell and The Sea, the Sea. Shot in Oxford and London last year, it charts the slow slip of one of the best and bravest minds in England into a scared and silent dementia.

The film, which is released on January 18, is based on two volumes of memoirs written by her husband, John Bayley. Last night he said that the real tragedy was that Iris was not there herself. "She loved meeting people, especially interesting glamorous ones, she would have just loved this - especially as she was being played by Judi Dench."

He said watching Iris's decline on the big screen had not been as traumatic as he had feared. "I didn't burst into floods of tears which was a great relief to me. I saw it as what it was, a very strong work of art."

Accompanied by his new wife, Audi Villers, 65, he said he did not mind being portrayed as a loveable klutz by Jim Broadbent, also in the running for a best supporting actor at next month's Globe awards in Los Angeles.