Further Requirements

Larkin's last collection of miscellaneous prose, Required Writing, published within the writer's lifetime, in 1983, won the W.H.Smith Award. This generous sequel, which must surely leave Larkin's posthumous bottom drawer denuded, deserves to be similarly successful. Among many other delights, we read Larkin on his own poetry, on Hull, on Housman, Hardy, MacNeice, Auden and Betjeman, on Evelyn Waugh as a letter writer, on his desert island discs (classics, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith; chosen book, the complete plays of Bernard Shaw). The index has, at a guess, 750 names, which gives an idea of the scope of the collection (Desert Island Discs, incidentally, is not indexed, so you'll have to look it up under Plomley, Roy). Inevitably one finds oneself, as in a conversation with a friend, learning about topics in which one has no previous interest - the last two minor short stories of Ian Fleming, the possibility that Christina Rossetti had a secret married lover, a whole batallion of minor books now little read. This is a tiny frustration for any reader blessed with such good companionship. Larkin's gift as a reviewer and interviewee was a combination of super-sharp insight, transparent thinking, flashes of dry wit, and a relaxed manner devoid of pomp or pretension. He's oddly touching on being a librarian, on the day job that made literary effort so often seem like the road not taken. Especially entertaining is the slightly tense interview with Anthony Thwaite on The Oxford Book of Twentieth-century English Verse, in which Larkin's bluntly mundane answers steadfastly refuse to raise the tone. "Once you'd accepted the ideas [of the book]," asks Thwaite, "how did you go about it?" "Well, in simplistic terms, I read all the poetry produced in this century, which took about four and half years, and then picked out the bits I liked the best." ... and he continues in this vein with admirable tenacity. This is a fine bedtime or loo book, enjoyable for some of the most honest responses to literature and belles lettres you are likely to come across. (Kirkus UK)