People and places are the source of my work, both in prose and verse-and this remark is not the truism it seems, for I do not distinguish as sharply between a place and a person as most people seem to do.

I am superstitious, not adventurous, sometimes clairvoyant especially where women are concerned, bad at hiding my feelings, and am immoderately amused at bucolic jests and the knockabout side of life in general.

Then by good luck W. B. Yeats, liking my first book of verse, asked me to come and see him. I owe more to him than to any man living, and my intense admiration for his work was reinforced by my intense admiration for himself.

Real people are places to me as much as persons: I want to see them, as I want to see the places I am fond of, in all weathers and at all times of the year.

I liked the ballad very much. My parents, I believe, liked it too: but their only reaction at the time was to censure me for having called the sow after Granny.

The first literary effort of mine I can remember, bar a few short celebrations of the lives of woodlice, caterpillars, fleas, and suchlike, none of which are extant, was a ballad in so-called Chaucerian language about a sow.

I made friends with the country folk, as with the Irish fisher folk: and this mongrelism has given me two homes, two dialects, and two voices.

By way of sidelines, I have been a theatrical cartoonist, and an agent for interviewing prospective men and women teachers.

I broke down while at Oxford, was rejected by a record number of medical tribunals during the War, and finally got permission to leave Oxford and do civilian work till the War ended.