He created “The Mayor of Casterbridge” so quickly that if he were outside, he “would scribble on large dead leaves or pieces of stone or slate that came to hand,” Paula Byrne writes in a ...

Book of the Week. Hattie Morahan reads Paula Byrne's joyous and illuminating new biography of the novelist Philip Larkin regarded as the 20th century's very own Jane Austen.

Biographer Dr Paula Byrne thinks that is about to change. She believes she has come across a possible portrait of the author, lost to the world for nearly two centuries. Can the picture stand up ...

5/5 In Paula Byrne's joyous biography the fortunes of Barbara Pym are transformed.