The reappearance of Philip Larkin's Required Writing will be welcomed by the late poet's many readers and admirers. The book's first two parts, "Recollections" and "Interviews," provide autobiographical glimpses of the very private Larkin's childhood, his youth at Oxford, the genesis of his forty-year career as a librarian, and the influences that initially steered his poetry.
The second half of the book reflects Larkin's literary standards...