Diana Athill on her friendship with American poet Edward Field

Diana Athill was born in 1917. She worked for the BBC throughout the Second World War and then helped André Deutsch establish the publishing company that bore his name. She is the author of five volumes of memoirs - Stet, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe - and a novel, Don't Look at Me Like That. A selection of her memoirs appear in Life Class published in November 2009. Her most recent work is Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend, which charts a 30-year correspondence with American poet Edward Field. She lives in London.