Quotes from James Booth

Librarianship was a good choice of profession for him, he claims, since 'it has just the right blend of academic interest and administration that seems to match my particular talents, such as they are'.

Larkin arrived in Wellington on 1 December 1943, an inexperienced, unworldly young man of twenty-one. It was, on the face of it, an unpromising place to start a literary career. 'Too large to have the community spirit of a village and too small to engender the cultural activities of a larger town, it was an unremarkable little place with a built-in resistance to new ideas and even perhaps to newcomers.

Writing to Sutton in mid-December, he made a show of disdain for the duties of his new position: 'I am entirely unassisted in my labours, and spend most of my time handing out tripey novels to morons. I feel it is not at all a suitable occupation for a man of acute sensibility and genius.