James Booth is the Philip Larkin Society's Literary Adviser & Co-Editor of About Larkin, the society's journal. He has published two books on Philip Larkin: Philip Larkin: Writer (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991) and Philip Larkin: The Poet’s Plight (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). He has also edited Larkin’s early girls’-school stories and poems as Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions (Faber, 2002), and a volume of critical essays, New Larkins for Old (Macmillan, 2000), arising from the first Hull International Conference on the Work of Philip Larkin mounted by the Society in 1997. He has recently retired from the Department of English at the University of Hull. His new biography of Larkin: Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love was published in August 2014. In the first part of our conversation with James, he tells us about how he became an expert on Larkin including his time as lecturer of the University of Hull. 

Presented by Lyn Lockwood.  
Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band.  
Audio production by Simon Galloway.

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