A work that features: reviews and critical assessments of writers and writing; pieces on jazz, mostly uncollected; some interviews given on various occasions.
These letters throw light on a more complex figure. Whether addressing his literary friends, who included Barbara Pym, Kingsley Amis and John Betjeman, or those less prominently placed, Larkin shows himself to be a frank and generous letter-writer.
In particular, it was the years during which he and his sister looked after their mother that shaped the writer we know so well: a number of poems written over this time are... Læs mere