Further requirements - Philip Larkin

Larkin's Required Writing, his selection from his miscellaneous prose 1953-82, was highly praised and enjoyed when it appeared in 1983. It was the last book to be published by him during his lifetime and won the W. H. Smith Award. It was also chosen by many critics and reviewers as one of their books of the year. Larkin died in December 1985. Further Requirements gathers together many other interviews, broadcasts, statements and reviews. Some of them date from the period after he had chosen the contents of Required Writing; others come from obscure publications, including some early pieces. Taken all together this collection of fugitive or reprinted material fills in a consistent but sometimes unexpected portrait of Philip Larkin - mordant, intolerant, generous, but always himself. It will give great pleasure to all admirers of his work. Required Writing was dedicated to Anthony Thwaite, one of Larkin's chosen literary executors, who has edited and introduced this new selection. He edited the birthday tribute Larkin at Sixty in 1982 and, after Larkin's death, both the Collected Poems and the Selected Letters. His own Selected Poems appeared in 1997.