Everything about Philip Larkin totally explained
Philip Arthur Larkin,
CH,
CBE,
FRSL, (
9 August 1922 –
2 December 1985) was an
English poet,
novelist and
jazz critic. He spent his working life as a university
librarian and was offered the
Poet Laureateship following the death of
John Betjeman, but declined the post. Larkin is commonly regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the
twentieth century. He first came to prominence with the release of his third collection
The Less Deceived in 1955.
The Whitsun Weddings and
High Windows followed in 1964 and 1974. In 2003 Larkin was chosen as "the nation's best-loved poet" in a
survey by the
Poetry Book Society, and in 2008
The Times named Larkin as the greatest post-war writer.
Larkin was born in
city of
Coventry,
West Midlands,
England, the only son and younger child of Sydney Larkin (1884–1948), city treasurer of Coventry, who came from Lichfield, and his wife, Eva Emily Day (1886–1977), of Epping. From 1930 to 1940 he was educated at
King Henry VIII School in Coventry, and in October 1940, in the midst of the
Second World War, went up to
St John's College,
Oxford, to read English language and literature. Having been rejected for military service because of his poor eyesight, he was able, unlike many of his contemporaries, to follow the traditional full-length degree course, taking a first-class degree in 1943. Whilst at Oxford he met
Kingsley Amis, who would become a lifelong friend and frequent correspondent. Shortly after graduating he was appointed municipal librarian at
Wellington, Shropshire. In 1946, he became assistant librarian at
University College, Leicester and in 1955 sub-librarian at
Queen's University, Belfast. In March 1955, Larkin was appointed librarian at the
University of Hull, a position he retained until his death.
Life
1922 – 1950: Upbringing, education & early career
Philip Larkin was born on
9 August 1922 in
Coventry,
West Midlands,
England. He lived with his family in Poultney Road,
Radford, Coventry until he was five years old. From 1927 to 1945 the family home was 1 Manor Road, a large three-story detached house near the city centre that was demolished in the 1960s to make way for the Coventry ring road. His sister Catherine, known as Kitty, was about 10 years older than himself. His father, Sydney Larkin, a self-made man who had risen to be Coventry City Treasurer, His mother, Eva, was a nervous passive woman, dominated by her husband.
Larkin's childhood was at first unusual: neither friends nor relatives ever visited the family home and he was educated by his mother and elder sister until the age of eight. Despite this, and the stammer he'd already developed, when he joined Coventry’s
King Henry VIII Junior School he fitted in immediately and made close, long-standing friendships with James "Jim" Sutton, Colin Gunner and Noel “Josh” Hughes. Although home life was relatively cold Larkin enjoyed support from his parents. For example, his deep passion for
jazz was supported by purchases of a drum kit and a saxophone, supplemented with a subscription for
Down Beat, the first of Larkin’s many jazz magazines. At the age of 16 Larkin fared relatively poorly when he sat his School Certificate exam. However, he was allowed to stay on at school and two years later earned distinctions in English and History, and passed the extrance exams for
St John’s College, Oxford.
Larkin’s time at Oxford coincided with
World War Two. The
Brideshead Revisited image had been put on hold, and most of the male students were studying for highly truncated degrees. Larkin himself failed his military medical, thanks to his deeply poor eyesight, and was able to study for the full three years. Through his tutorial partner, Norman Iles, he met
Kingsley Amis. Amis remained a close friend of Larkin throughout his life and encouraged his taste for ridicule and irreverence. Amis, Larkin and other university friends formed a group they titled “The Seven”. They met to discuss each others' poetry, to listen to jazz, and to drink enthusiastically. During this time he'd his first real social interaction with the opposite sex, but made no romantic headway. In 1943 he sat his
finals, and, having dedicated much of his time to his own writing, was greatly surprised by being awarded a first-class degree.
In autumn 1943 Larkin was appointed librarian of the public library in
Wellington, Shropshire. While working there, in the spring of 1944 he met his first girlfriend, Ruth Bowman, an academically ambitious 16-year-old schoolgirl. In autumn 1945, Ruth's studies at
King’s College, London began, and during his visits to her there the couple started sexual relations. By June 1946 Larkin was halfway through qualifying for membership of the
Library Association and was appointed sub-librarian of
University College, Leicester. It was while visiting Larkin in Leicester and witnessing the
Senior Common Room that Kingsley Amis found the inspiration to write
Lucky Jim. Six weeks after his father's death from cancer in March 1948, Larkin proposed to Ruth, and that summer the couple spent their annual holiday touring
Hardy country.
1950 – 1969: Personal, poetic & professional prime
In June 1950 Larkin was appointed sub-librarian of
Queen’s University, Belfast, a post he took up that September. Prior to his departure he and Ruth split up. At some stage between his appointment to Queen’s and the calling off of the engagement, his relationship with
Monica Jones, a lecturer in English at Leicester, became sexual. He spent five years in Belfast, which appear to have been the most contented of his life. While his relationship with Monica Jones developed, he also had a sexually adventurous affair with Patsy Strang, who at the time was in an
open marriage with one of his colleagues. At one stage she offered to leave her husband to marry Larkin. From summer 1951 onwards Larkin would holiday with Monica in various locations around the British Isles. While in Belfast he also had a significant, though sexually undeveloped friendship with Winifred Arnott, the subject of "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album". This came to a close when she married in 1954. Also during this period he gave
Kingsley Amis extensive advice while the latter was writing
Lucky Jim.
In 1955 Larkin was appointed Librarian at
Hull University, a post he'd hold until his death. For his first year he lodged in bedsits and then in 1956, at the age of 34, he for the first time rented a self-contained dwelling, a top-floor flat overlooking Hull's Pearson Park. This vantage point was later commemorated in the poem "
High Windows". In the post-war years Hull University underwent an enormous expansion typical of the period. During the first 15 years of Larkin's time there, he was deeply involved throughout the creation of a new and thoroughly modern library that was built in two stages, and from 1967 named
Brynmor Jones Library. From 1957 until his death his secretary was Betty Mackereth. All access to him by his colleagues was through her and she came to know as much about Larkin's compartmentalised life as anyone.
In February 1961 Larkin's friendship with his colleague Maeve Brennan became romantic, despite her strong Roman Catholic beliefs. In spring 1963 Maeve persuaded him to attend a
SCR dance with her, despite his preference for smaller gatherings. This seems to have been a pivotal occasion in their relationship, one which he memorialised in his longest and unfinished poem "The Dance". Also at her prompting and around this time Larkin learnt to drive and bought a car.
Around this time Monica Jones, whose parents had died in quick succession in autumn 1959 bought a holiday cottage in
Haydon Bridge, near
Hexham, which she and Larkin visited regularly. His notable poem "Show Saturday" is a description of the 1973
Bellingham show in the North Tyne valley.
In 1964, in the aftermath of the release of
The Whitsun Weddings Larkin was the subject of an episode of the arts programme
Monitor. In its form of a series of interviews with
John Betjeman in and around
Hull it was largely responsible for the creation of Larkin's public persona.
1969 – 1985: "Beyond the light stand failure and remorse"
The second, and much larger stage of Hull University's new
Brynmor Jones Library was completed in 1969. Larkin had had an important role in its coming into existence. In October 1970 he was able to start work on compiling a new anthology,
The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. He had been awarded a Visiting Fellowship at
All Souls' College, Oxford for two academic terms, which allowed him to consult Oxford's
Bodleian Library, a
copyright library. Larkin was a major contributor to the re-evaluation of the poetry of
Thomas Hardy, which in comparison to his work as a novelist had been ignored; in Larkin's 'idiosyncratic' and 'controversial' anthology, Hardy received the longest selection.
In 1971 he began corresponding with his schoolfriend Colin Gunner, who had led a picaresque life. In the period 1973 to 1974 he was made an Honorary Fellow of
St John's College, Oxford and awarded
honorary degrees by
Warwick,
St Andrews and
Sussex universities. In January of 1974 Hull University informed Larkin that they were going to dispose of the building on Pearson Park in which he lived. Shortly afterwards he bought a detached house in a thoroughly suburban street called "Newland Park" and moved in.
Shortly after splitting up with Maeve Brennan in August 1973, Larkin attended
W. H. Auden's memorial service in
Oxford cathedral with Monica as his official partner. However, in March 1975 the relationship with Maeve restarted, and three weeks after this he started a secret affair with his secretary Betty Mackereth, writing the long-undiscovered poem "We met at the end of the party" for her. Despite the logistical difficulties in having three relationships simultaneously, the situation continued until March 1978. From this moment on he and Monica were a monogamous couple. Five years later, in 1983, Monica was hospitalised owing to
shingles, and the severity of her symptoms including the effects of shingles on her eyes distressed Larkin. Regular care became necessary with general decline in her health, so within a month she moved into his Newland Park home and remained there for the rest of her life.
At the memorial service of
John Betjeman who had died in July 1984, Larkin was asked if he'd accept the post of
Poet Laureate but he declined, not least because he'd long ceased to write poetry in a manner he regarded as meaningful. The following year Larkin began to suffer from
oesophageal cancer and, on
11 June 1985, underwent exploratory surgery. His cancer was found to have spread and was inoperable. On 28 November he collapsed and was readmitted to hospital. He died four days later, on
2 December 1985, at the age of 63, and was buried at the
Cottingham Municipal Cemetery near
Hull. His gravestone reads simply "Philip Larkin, Writer".
On his deathbed Larkin had requested that his diaries be destroyed. This request was granted by Monica Jones and Betty Mackereth: the diaries were shredded page by page and then burnt. Other private papers were saved, against his wishes.
When she died on
15 February 2001, Monica, who had been the major beneficiary of Larkin's will, in turn left about a million pounds in total to
St Paul's Cathedral,
Hexham Abbey and
Durham Cathedral.
Creative output
From his mid-teens Larkin “wrote ceaselessly”, producing both poetry, modelled on Eliot and
W. H. Auden, and fiction. He wrote five full-length novels, all of which he destroyed shortly after completion. While he was at Oxford University he published a poem for the first time: "Ultimatum" in
The Listener. Around this time he developed an alter ego for his prose called Brunette Coleman. Under this name he wrote two novellas
Trouble at Willow Gables and
Michaelmas Term at St Brides, as well as a supposed autobiography and an equally fictional creative manifesto called “What we're writing for”.
Richard Bradford has written that these curious works show “three registers: cautious indifference, archly overwritten symbolism with a hint of Lawrence and prose that appears to disclose its writer’s involuntary feelings of sexual excitement.” After these works Larkin started his first published novel
Jill. This was published by R. A. Caton, a publisher of barely-legal pornography, who also issued serious fiction as a cover for his core activities.
Around the time that
Jill was being prepared for publication, Caton asked Larkin if he wrote poetry as well, which resulted in
The North Ship, a collection of poems written between 1942 and 1944 which showed the increasing influence of
Yeats that was published three months before
Jill. Immediately after completing
Jill, Larkin started work on the novel
A Girl in Winter, completing it in 1945. It was published in 1947 by
Faber & Faber and well received,
The Sunday Times calling it “an exquisite performance and nearly faultless”. Subsequently he made at least three extended attempts at writing a third novel, but none got further than a solid start.
It was during Larkin’s five years in Belfast that he reached maturity as a poet. The bulk of his next published collection of poems
The Less Deceived was written here, though eight of the twenty-nine poems included were from the late 1940s. It was during this time that he made his final attempts at novel writing, and also gave extensive help to
Kingsley Amis with the latter’s first published novel
Lucky Jim. In October 1954 an article in
The Spectator made the first use of the title
The Movement to describe the dominant trend in British post-war literature. Various poems of his were included in a 1953 PEN Anthology that also included poems by Amis and
Robert Conquest, and Larkin was seen to be a part of this grouping.
In November 1955
The Less Deceived was published by The Marvell Press, an independent start-up company operating out of Hessle just beyond the west border of Hull. At first the volume attracted little attention, but in December it was included in The Times' list of books of the year. From this point the book's reputation spread and sales blossomed throughout 1956 and 1957. During his first five years in Hull the pressures of work slowed Larkin's output to an average of just two-and-a-half poems a year, but it was during this period that he wrote "
An Arundel Tomb", "
The Whitsun Weddings" and "
Here".
In 1963
Faber & Faber reissued
Jill, including a long introduction by Larkin that included much information about his time at
Oxford University and his friendship with Kingsley Amis. This acted as prelude to the release the following year of
The Whitsun Weddings which confirmed his reputation: almost immediately after its publication he was elected to a Fellowship of the
Royal Society of Literature. In the years that followed Larkin wrote several of his most famous and iconic poems, such as "
Annus Mirabilis", "
High Windows" and "
This Be The Verse". In the 1970s Larkin wrote a series of longer and more sober poems: "The Building", "The Old Fools" and "
Aubade".
Larkin's final collection
High Windows was published in June 1974. Its more direct use of language meant that it didn't meet with uniform praise; nonetheless it sold over twenty thousand copies in its first year alone. For some critics it represents a falling-off from his previous two books, yet it contains a number of his much-loved pieces, including "
This Be The Verse" and "The Explosion", as well as the
title poem. "Annus Mirabilis" (Year of Wonder), also from that volume, contains the frequently quoted observation that sexual intercourse began in 1963 which he claimed was "rather late for me" despite his having first had sexual relations in 1945. Bradford, prompted by comments in Maeve Brennan's memoir, suggests that the poem commemorates Larkin's relationship with Brennan moving from the romantic to the sexual.
Later in 1974 he started work on his final major poem "Aubade". It was completed in 1977 and published in the 23 December issue of the
TLS.
Although Larkin's earliest work shows in turn the influences of
Eliot, Auden and Yeats, the development of his mature poetic identity in the early 1950s coincided with the growing influence of
Thomas Hardy. He is well-known for his use of colloquial language in his poetry, partly balanced by a similarly antique word choice. With fine use of
enjambement and
rhyme, his poetry is highly structured, but never rigid. Death and fatalism were recurring themes and subjects of his poetry, his final major poem "Aubade" being an example of this. Larkin specialised in making poetic the trivial, in finding significance in items of everyday commoness.
In 1972 he wrote the oft-quoted "Going, Going", a poem which expresses the romantic
fatalism in his view of England which was typical of his later years. In it, he prophesies a complete destruction of the countryside, and expresses an idealised sense of national togetherness and identity: "And that will be England gone ... it'll linger on in galleries; but all that remains for us will be concrete and tyres". The poem ends with the doom-laden statement, "I just think it'll happen, soon".
Larkin was by contrast a notable critic of
modernism in contemporary art and literature; his scepticism is at its most nuanced and illuminating in
Required Writing, a collection of his book reviews and essays; and at its most inflamed and polemical in his introduction to his collected jazz reviews,
All What Jazz, 126 record-review columns he wrote for the
Daily Telegraph between 1961 and 1971, which contains an attack on modern jazz that widens into a wholesale critique of modernism in the arts.
Legacy
Critical reputation
Larkin's posthumous reputation was affected by the publication of his official biography,
Andrew Motion's
Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life (1993), and
Anthony Thwaite's edition of his letters (1992). These revealed his obsession with
pornography, his
racism, his increasing shift to the political
right wing, and his habitual expressions of venom and spleen. These revelations have been dismissed by the author and critic
Martin Amis (son of Kingsley Amis), who argues that the letters in particular show nothing more than a tendency for Larkin to tailor his words according to the recipient, rather than representing Larkin's true opinions. This idea is developed in Richard Bradford's biography: he compares the style Larkin took in his correspondence with the author
Barbara Pym with that he adopted with his old schoolfriend Colin Gunner.
Despite controversy about his personal life and opinions, he remains one of Britain's most popular poets; three of his poems, "This Be The Verse", "The Whitsun Weddings" and "An Arundel Tomb", featured in the "Nation's Top 100 Poems" as voted for by viewers of the
BBC's
Bookworm in 1995. Media interest in Larkin has increased in the
twenty-first century. His poem
At Grass is featured in one Anthology booklet of the
GCSE English exam, and
Afternoons appears in another,
Best Words. Larkin's
The Whitsun Weddings collection is one of the available poetry texts in the
AQA English Literature
A Level syllabus, whilst
High Windows is offered by the
OCR board, and "An Arundel Tomb" in the Edexcel board Poetry Anthology. The Larkin Society was formed in 1995, ten years after the poet's death; its president is Anthony Thwaite, one of Larkin's
literary executors.
A pamphlet of Larkin's most famous work was included with the
Guardian newspaper of
14 March 2008. Larkin's biographer Andrew Motion contributed the foreword to the booklet.
Recordings
In 1964 Larkin was interviewed by Sir John Betjeman for the BBC programme
Monitor: Philip Larkin meets John Betjeman. The film, together with the original
rushes, is stored at the Larkin archive at the University of Hull.
Larkin was the subject of the
South Bank Show in 1982. Larkin didn't appear on camera although
Melvyn Bragg, in his introduction to the programme, stressed the poet had given his full cooperation. The programme featured contributions from Kingsley Amis, Andrew Motion and
Alan Bennett. Bennett read several of Larkin's works on an edition of "Poetry in Motion", broadcast by
Channel 4 in 1990.
After lying undiscovered in a
Hornsea garage for over two decades, an unprecedented collection of Larkin audio tapes was found in 2006. The recordings were made by the poet in the early 1980s. Extracts can be heard during a
Sky News report. His poetry-speaking voice was very different from his normal voice, which he described as 'halfway between the of drawl of Leicester and the laziness of Birmingham'. A programme examing the discovery in more depth,
The Larkin Tapes, was broadcast on
BBC Radio 4 in March 2008.
Fiction based on Larkin's life
In 1999,
Oliver Ford Davies starred in Ben Brown's play
Larkin With Women at the
Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, reprising his role at the
Orange Tree Theatre, London, in 2006. The play was published by Larkin's own publishers,
Faber. Three years later
Sir Tom Courtenay debuted his one-man play
Pretending to Be Me at the
West Yorkshire Playhouse, later transferring the production to the
Comedy Theatre in London's West End. An audio recording of the play, which is based on Larkin's letters, interviews, diaries and verse, was released in 2005.
In 2003,
BBC Two broadcast a play, titled
Love Again, that dealt with the last thirty years of Larkin's life (though not shot anywhere near Hull). The lead role was played by
Hugh Bonneville, and in the same year
Channel 4 broadcast the documentary
Philip Larkin, Love and Death in Hull.
The writer and critic
David Quantick parodied Larkin's poem
An Arundel Tomb during his comedy programme
One again on
BBC Radio 4 in the same month, with the poet peppering his work with references to guns and other weaponry. In the sketch, Larkin answers the telephone to Kingsley Amis and agrees to meet his friend in the pub later.
In his acclaimed play
The History Boys (2004) Alan Bennett quotes from Larkin's "
MCMXIV" and the character of the Headmaster, a
geography graduate from Hull, refers to Larkin as 'the
Himmler of the accessions desk'.
In 1957 his friend
Robert Conquest, of the group known as
The Movement, played a
practical joke on him. The story was the subject of the comedy radio play by Chris Harrald,
Mr Larkin's Awkward Day, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday
29 April 2008. It tells the true story of the joke that had Larkin fearing he might be sent to prison. In September 1957, a pre-fame Larkin prepares for another ordinary day and picks up his post. But one letter stands out: an official-looking envelope embossed with the words
Scotland Yard. The letter reveals that there's an ongoing investigation into him, conducted under the
Obscene Publications Act 1921. The letter informs Larkin that he might have to appear in court since it's alleged he's been buying pornography – and he knows all too well that he has. Larkin begins to fret about what to do – should he destroy the evidence under the gaze of a watchful landlady before the police arrive? Eventually, he goes to his librarian job. As he leaves the library he freezes when Inspector Cough introduces himself and says that he's very interested in Larkin's literary tastes. Larkin begins to defend himself until it transpires that the men have crossed wires – one fears he's being quizzed about purchasing dubious magazines, the other thinks he's having a friendly chat about literature. Finally, Larkin prises himself free from the Inspector to dash off to a meeting with his solicitors, who ask him what journals he's been buying. After he returns to his lodgings his landlady knocks on Larkin's door – someone wants him on the phone. It's Larkin's historian friend, Bob Conquest, and he's laughing. He asks Larkin about the silly joke he played on him, the embossed envelope and so on. When it becomes clear that Larkin was completely taken in, Conquest offers to pay his solicitors' costs.
Works
Poetry
See also Category: Poetry by Philip Larkin
- The North Ship (1945)
- XX Poems (1951)
- The Less Deceived (1955)
- "Church Going"
- "Toads"
- "Maiden Name"
- "Born Yesterday"
- "Lines on a Young Lady's Autograph Album"
- The Whitsun Weddings (1964)
- High Windows (1974)
- Collected Poems 1938–83 (1988) (arranged in chronological order)
- "Aubade" (first published 1977)
- "Party Politics" (last published poem)
- "The Dance" (unfinished & unpublished)
- "Love Again" (unpublished)
- Collected Poems (2003) (the four published collections plus an appendix of other published poems)
Fiction
Jill (1946) ISBN 0-87951-961-4
A Girl in Winter (1947) ISBN 0-87951-217-2
"Trouble at Willow Gables" and Other Fiction 1943–1953 (2002) (writing as "Brunette Coleman") ISBN 0-571-20347-7
Non-fiction
All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–1971
Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982 (1983)
Further Requirements: Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews 1952–1985
Brynmor Jones Library, 1929–79 (1979) ISBN 0-8595-8538-7
Miscellaneous
The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (as editor) (1973)Further Information
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