A short biography of Philip Larkin

Early life

Philip (Arthur) Larkin was born in Coventry on 9^th August 1922. His father was Coventry’s city treasurer. He was educated in Coventry and then read English language and literature at Oxford University, graduating in 1943. He escaped military service due to having poor eyesight. He also suffered from a stammer.

While still at school he showed promise as a writer, and this developed during his time at Oxford. A fellow student was Kingsley Amis, and the two developed a firm friendship before Amis was called up. Another great friend and influence was Bruce Montgomery, who became a writer of detective stories.

Larkin’s poetry at this time was not particularly distinguished. He had yet to acquire a poetic voice of his own, being excessively influenced by the work of Auden and, later, Yeats.  

Leicester and Belfast 

On leaving Oxford he was rejected by the Civil Service, and almost by accident became a librarian. Despite being untrained, he got a job as a public librarian in Wellington, Shropshire. He found the work neither stimulating nor enjoyable, but it did lead to his first romantic entanglement, with a girl who was 16 years old and five years younger than himself. There was a brief engagement, but nothing more.

In 1946 Larkin moved to Leicester, as an assistant librarian at what would become Leicester University. He completed his first novel, Jill, which had been started while he was at Oxford. This, and his first book of poems, The North Ship, were virtual flops on publication. However, his second novel, A Girl in Winter, was published in 1947 and it attracted critical attention and praise. 

At Leicester, Larkin came across Monica Jones, a lecturer in English, who was to become Larkin’s friend and adviser for the rest of his life. 

At this stage of his life, Larkin considered himself to be a novelist who wrote a few poems. However, even his novel-writing was not taking off, and it seemed as though a literary career of any note was unlikely to happen for him. 

Although, during his time at Leicester, he did write a few poems that showed promise of what was to come, it was not until he moved to Belfast in 1950, to become sub-librarian at Queen’s University, that the promise started to be realised. He wrote some of his best poems soon after the move, and had them published in high-circulation journals and read on the BBC.

Larkin was becoming recognised as a poet worth watching, and the literary editor of The Spectator, J. D. Scott, wrote of Larkin as being part of “The Movement”, which included such up-and-coming writers as Iris Murdoch and Larkin’s old friend Kingsley Amis.

Hull

In 1955, George Hartley, the editor of a poetry magazine in Hull, wanted to launch himself as a book publisher, and he asked Larkin to compile a volume that would get the venture off to a good start. The result was The Less Deceived, which was published later that year. Larkin himself arrived in Hull at this time, as the university librarian, a post he held for the rest of his career.

Success now arrived on two fronts. As the university librarian he was widely acclaimed for the transformation he achieved in creating an organisation that was fit for purpose. As a poet, he was recognised as a major force in modern poetry. He still, however, found time for a third important strand in his life, which was jazz. From the early sixties he wrote a regular jazz column in The Daily Telegraph.

Larkin’s poetic achievements

However, it was not until 1964 that his next poetry volume appeared. This was The Whitsun Weddings, which is probably the book for which he is best remembered. It was an immediate success, and it led to many honours flowing his way, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. 

Ten more years elapsed before the publication, in 1974, of High Windows, which proved to be the last poetry volume published in his lifetime. In the meantime he had written many reviews and articles, and compiled The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. This was highly acclaimed in some quarters but derided in others, with complaints being made about the poets whom Larkin had omitted. The book is notable for the space devoted to the poems of Thomas Hardy, whom Larkin greatly admired and championed.

He wrote very few poems during the rest of his life, and his awareness that his muse had largely deserted him was the reason for his rejection of the Poet Laureateship when it was offered to him on the death of John Betjeman in 1984. However, he was very active during his last years in writing prose pieces and serving on a variety of boards and committees, including the judging panel for the 1977 Booker Prize and the British Library Board.

The highest honour he received was that of Companion of Honour in 1985. However, his health failed during that same year and he died of cancer of the throat on 2^nd December 1985, aged 63.

Larkin’s legacy

He will be remembered as an exceptionally gifted poet who never lost the common touch. In his private life he was entertaining, sociable and witty, although some of the views he expressed proved to be very controversial, with accusations of racism and misogyny being levelled at him. His poetry was always eminently readable, although often sparse and direct. His observations of the generation of the “swinging sixties” are incisive, often scurrilous and cynical, but also full of wit and detached amusement.  

Like Betjeman, he regretted what was being lost in a country that was too ready to throw away the best things of the past and fail to learn the lessons of history. Hiowever, his language was far more raw and savage than that of Betjeman. Perhaps a fair assessment of Larkin’s legacy would be to say that he voiced Betjemanian thoughts in language resembling that of Ted Hughes – who was coincidentally the poet who acquired the Laureateship that Larkin turned down.

© John Welford