Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love

by James Booth

  45. DPL/1/8/32 and DPL/1/8/47.

  46. In ‘Larkin as Animal Poet’ (AL 22, October 2006, pp. 5–9) I suggested that the hedgehog might have been diseased or already dead, since it was out on the lawn in the daytime. However, Larkin says that he mowed the lawn ‘last night’, and hedgehogs are active in the dusk. I am grateful to Peter James for pointing out my mistake.

  47. http://www.amarc.org.uk/Newsletter02.pdf (accessed 14 December 2010).

  48. Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes, ed. Christopher Reid (London: Faber & Faber, 2007), p. 404.

  49. 23 August 1979. SL, p. 603.

  50. DPL/1/8/22.

  51. DPL/1/8/26 and 1/8/28.

  52. DPL/1/8/30.

  53. For a facsimile and transcription see AL 34 (October 2012), pp. 5–9.

  54. Interview with the Observer, RW, pp. 47–56.

  23: Extinction (1980–5)

  1. To Amis, 26 April 1980. SL, p. 619.

  2. Ruth Siverns, Barlow Dale’s Casebook (London: Macmillan, 1981).

  3. In her last years Ruth Siverns became friends with Winifred Dawson (née Arnott), who happened to live in nearby Winchester. She died on 31 December 2012. Obituaries appeared, by myself (www.guardian.co.uk/books) and by Win Dawson, AL 35 (April 2013), pp. 5–6.

  4. DPL/2/3/91.

  5. ‘Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album’, ‘MCMXIV’, ‘Toads’, ‘The Explosion’, ‘A Study of Reading Habits’, ‘Home is so Sad’, ‘Within the dream you said’, ‘Afternoons’, ‘The Old Fools’, ‘For Sidney Bechet’, ‘So through that unripe day you bore your head’, ‘Next, Please’, ‘The Trees’, ‘Church Going’, ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, ‘Days’, ‘Wires’, ‘An Arundel Tomb’, ‘Cut Grass’, ‘Vers de Société’, ‘I put my mouth’, ‘At Grass’, ‘Mr Bleaney’, ‘Coming’, ‘Toads Revisited’, ‘The Building’.

  6. James Orwin, ‘Serious Earth: Philip Larkin’s American Tapes’, AL 25 (April 2008), pp. 20–4, at p. 22.

  7. Ibid.

  8. The recording was omitted from Bloomfield’s Bibliography. The readings were released commercially by Faber in 2009 under the title The Sunday Sessions: Philip Larkin Reading his Poetry. Orwin, ‘Serious Earth: Philip Larkin’s American Tapes’, p. 23.

  9. Motion, p. 483.

  10. SL, p. 624.

  11. Motion, p. 482.

  12. Ibid., p. 484.

  13. SL, p. 632.

  14. 13 January 1981. SL, p. 637.

  15. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article4718715.ece (accessed 14 December 2010). Bragg gives a highly coloured account of a meeting at a restaurant at which Larkin became drunk, refused to leave and, according to Bragg, ‘had to be forcibly ejected by policemen with dogs’.

  16. Motion, p. 489.

  17. Ibid., p. 486.

  18. SL, p. 662.

  19. 23 February 1982. SL, p. 665.The reference is to Salman Rushdie.

  20. Interview with Paris Review, RW, p. 65.

  21. RW, pp. 62, 68.

  22. Ibid., p. 60.

  23. Ibid., pp. 69, 58.

  24. Jane Thomas, Philip Larkin Society website: ‘Poem of the Month’, June 2011 (‘Love’): http://www.philiplarkin.com/histpom/proposer/thomas_j.htm (accessed 1 September 2012).

  25. Motion, p. 497.

  26. Douglas Dunn (ed.), A Rumoured City: New Poets from Hull (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1982), p. 9.

  27. Hartley, p. 202.

  28. Motion, p. 496.

  29. Ibid., p. 492.

  30. To Thwaite, 17 May 1982. SL, p. 671.

  31. 6 June 1982. SL, p. 674.

  32. To Virginia Peace. SL, p. 663. Whalen later wrote Philip Larkin and English Poetry (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990).

  33. Michael Hamburger, Philip Larkin (London: Enitharmon Press, 2002), pp. 35–6.

  34. Motion, p. 497. Janet Brennan, ‘Philip Larkin and Margaret Thatcher’. AL 35 (April 2013), p. 11..

  35. LM, pp. 442–3.

  36. Motion, p. 498.

  37. Ibid., p. 499.

  38. Betty Mackereth, interview with the author, 20 June 2011.

  39. DPL(2)/2/15.

  40. RW, p. 11; to Colin Gunner, 2 August 1983, SL, p. 700.

  41. In a letter to Daniel Weissbort of 25 November 1983, Ted Hughes paid rueful tribute to the way the ‘spermicide’ of Larkin’s authority, and the ‘subtle efficiency’ of his ‘sort of social one-upmanship’, made other kinds of poetry seem ‘a genetic mistake, unfit for [. . .] decent society’. ‘Some of the pieces are awfully good & persuasive [. . .] He’s a sour old cuss & the whole book’s outrageous propaganda for his own tastes & limitations & prejudices, but perfectly timed – philistinism has been browbeaten too long!’ Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes, ed. Christopher Reid (London: Faber & Faber, 2007), pp. 476–7.

  42. ‘Meeting Philip Larkin’, FR, pp. 112 and 116.

  43. 2 April 1984. LM, p. 444.

  44. Jane Bottomley, personal communication, 27 July 2011.

  45. Motion, pp. 508, 507.

  46. SL, p. 713.

  47. Judy Egerton, interview with the author, 17 December 2010.

  48. Hartley, p. 178.

  49. Jane Bottomley, personal communication, 27 July 2011.

  50. Judy Egerton, interview with the author, 17 December 2010.

  51. 16 September 1984. SL, p. 720.

  52. Motion, p. 510.

  53. 27 December 1984. Motion, p. 511.

  54. In 1999 the then Dean of Westminster, Wesley Carr, responded to the Larkin Society’s representations with reservations about Larkin’s religious views, and the opinion that a poet should not be considered until at least twenty years after his or her death. The current Dean, John Hall, clearly adopted a different policy in relation to Hughes.

  55. DPL/X4/5/5.

  56. Motion, p. 513.

  57. Brennan, p. 91.

  58. Jean Hartley believed that it was Monica. Personal communication, 2011.

  59. Brennan, p. 91.

  60. Betty Mackereth, interview with the author, 20 June 2011.

  61. Hartley, p. 207.

  62. Jean Hartley, ‘Larkin, Love and Sex’, AL 30 (October 2010), pp. 6–8, at p. 8.

  63. Brennan, p. 91.

  64. Thomas McAlindon, personal communication, 23 October 2011.

  65. Betty Mackereth, interview with the author, 20 June 2011.

  66. SL, p. 743.

  67. Motion, p. 519.

  68. Personal recollection of the author.

  69. Professor Dawes is now Chairman of the Philip Larkin Society.

  70. Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes, pp. 502–3.

  71. Motion, p. 520.

  72. Ibid., p. 521.

  Postscript: Petals and Graves

  1. Martin Amis, Introduction to Philip Larkin: Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 2011), p. xix.

  2. 13 September 1954. LM, p. 116.

  3. FR, p. 60.

  4. DPL/4/1/1–DPL/4/1/13.

  5. Betty Mackereth, interview with the author, 4 August 2003.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Motion, p. xvi.

  8. Collected Poems, p. xxii.

  9. Motion, pp. 519–20.

  10. Ibid., p. 307.

  11. Maeve wrote: ‘James Booth undertook the task of editing my text and skilfully welded its different elements into a harmonious whole’ (p. xii). My contribution was to encourage her to write at greater length and more candidly than she had originally intended. I helped her to distribute the material into chapters, provided the chapter headings and suggested the title. I also encouraged her to add the chapter ‘Religion’. Otherwise I scrupulously avoided any attempt to influence the content or tone of her book.

  12. James Booth, ‘“Snooker” at the Seaside: The Birthday Walk in Scarborough’, AL 16 (October 2003), pp. 29–30.

  13. James Booth, ‘Glimpses’ (interview with Monica Jones), AL 12 (October 2001), p. 22.

  14. Motion, pp. 310–11.

  15. Booth, ‘Glimpses�
��, pp. 23–4.

  16. James Booth, Philip Larkin: The Poet’s Plight (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Appendix, pp. 202–3.

  17. DX/329, inventory p. 584.

  18. DPL/1/4/24.

  19. John Betjeman, ‘On a Portrait of a Deaf Man’, Collected Poems (London: John Murray, enlarged edn, 1973), p. 96.

  20. ‘The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers.’ W. H. Auden, ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’, in The English Auden, ed. Edward Mendelson (London: Faber & Faber, 1986), p. 241.

  21. Note in an early draft of ‘The Building’. DPL/1/8/2.

  Bibliography

  1. Unpublished or partly published material

  Larkin family papers, Hull University Collection, The History Centre, Hull, U DLN/1–6. (Letters to Eva Larkin, U DLN/6).

  Larkin, various papers, Hull University Collection, The History Centre, Hull, U DP, U DPL.

  Letters to Kingsley Amis, The Huntington Library, California, AMS 353–428.

  Letters to Monica Jones, The Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Eng. c.7403–c.7445.

  Letters to James Sutton, Hull University Collection, The History Centre, Hull, U DP/174/2.

  Pictures, photographs, ornaments, etc. from 105 Newland Park, Hull University Collection, The History Centre, Hull (Philip Larkin Society deposit), U DX/329.

  Workbook 1 (1944–50), British Library, Add. MS. 52619.

  Workbooks 2–8: Hull University Collection, The History Centre, Hull, U DPL/1/2–8.

  Workbook containing drafts of poems from 1975–6, Emory University, Atlanta, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Library (MARBL).

  2. Publications of Larkin’s work

  All What Jazz: A Record Diary (London: Faber & Faber, 2nd edn, 1985).

  ‘Biographical Details: OXFORD’, parts 1 and 2, About Larkin 23 (April 2007), pp. 5–13, and About Larkin 24 (October 2007), pp. 4–19.

  The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin, ed. with an introduction and commentary by Archie Burnett (London: Faber & Faber, 2012).

  ‘Country Beauty’ (‘Verlaine’), About Larkin 36 (October 2013), pp. 4–5.

  Early Poems and Juvenilia, ed. A. T. Tolley (London: Faber & Faber, 2005).

  Further Requirements: Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews 1952–1985, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber & Faber, pbk edn with two additional chapters, 2002).

  A Girl in Winter (London: Faber & Faber, 1975 edn).

  High Windows (London: Faber & Faber, 1974).

  ‘An Incident in the English Camp’, About Larkin 12 (October 2001), pp. 5–10.

  Incidents from Phippy’s Schooldays, ed. Brenda Allen and James Acheson (Edmonton, Canada: Juvenilia Press, 2002).

  Jill (London: Faber & Faber, 1975 edn).

  ‘Larkin’s Dream Diary 1942–3, Part 1’ and ‘Part 2’, ed. Don Lee, About Larkin 27 (April 2009), pp. 5–13, and About Larkin 28 (October 2009), pp. 5–13.

  Larkin’s Jazz: Essays and Reviews 1940–84, ed. Richard Palmer and John White (London and New York: Continuum, 2001).

  ‘Larkin’s Second Dream Diary’, ed. James Booth, About Larkin 32 (October 2011), pp. 6–7.

  The Less Deceived (Hull: Marvell Press, 1955).

  Letters to Monica, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber & Faber/Bodleian Library, 2010).

  ‘Letters to my Mind’, About Larkin 34 (October 2012), pp. 5–9.

  The North Ship (London: Fortune Press, 1945; first Faber & Faber edn 1966).

  The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (London: Oxford University Press, 1973).

  ‘Peter’, About Larkin 11 (April 2001), pp. 13–23.

  Philip Larkin: Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Marvell Press/Faber & Faber, 1988, revised 1990).

  Philip Larkin: Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Marvell Press/Faber & Faber, 2003); excludes poems first published in 1988.

  Philip Larkin: Poems, selected by Martin Amis (London: Faber & Faber, 2011).

  Philip Larkin Reads and Comments on The Whitsun Weddings, Listen Records, ‘The Poet’s Voice’, ed. George Hartley (Hull: Marvell Press, 1965).

  Philip Larkin Reads The Less Deceived, Listen Records, ‘The Poet’s Voice’, ed. George Hartley (Hull: Marvell Press, 1958).

  ‘Poem for Penelope abt. the Mechanical Turd’, in Susannah Tarbush, ‘From Willow Gables to “Aubade”: Penelope Scott Stokes and Philip Larkin: Part 1’, About Larkin 25 (April 2008), pp. 5–11, at p. 11.

  Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982 (London: Faber & Faber, 1983).

  Selected Letters, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber & Faber, 1992).

  ‘Single to Belfast’, in Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life (London: Faber & Faber, 1993), pp. 196–7.

  ‘Story 1’, About Larkin 10 (October 2000), pp. 4–20.

  Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions, ed. James Booth (London: Faber & Faber, 2002).

  The Whitsun Weddings (London: Faber & Faber, 1964).

  ‘The Winter Palace’, About Larkin 33 (April 2012), front cover.

  ‘Worksheets of “At Grass”’, Phoenix 11/12 (1973/4), pp. 91–103.

  XX Poems, privately printed, Belfast, 1951.

  3. Bibliography and Concordance

  Bloomfield, B. C., Philip Larkin: A Bibliography 1933–1994 (London: British Library and Oak Knoll Press, revised and enlarged edn, 2002).

  Watt, R. J. C., A Concordance to the Poetry of Philip Larkin (Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 1995).

  4. Memoirs and Recollections

  Amis, Kingsley, Memoirs (London: Hutchinson, 1991).

  ——, ‘Oxford and After’, in Anthony Thwaite (ed.), Larkin at Sixty (London: Faber & Faber, 1982), pp. 23–30.

  Booth, James, ‘Glimpses’ (interview with Monica Jones), About Larkin 12 (October 2001), pp. 21–6.

  Brennan, Maeve, ‘Philip Larkin: a biographical sketch’, in Brian Dyson (ed.), The Modern Academic Library: Essays in Memory of Philip Larkin (London: Library Association, 1988), pp. 1–19.

  ——, The Philip Larkin I Knew (Manchester: Manchester University Press, Larkin Society Monograph 3, 2002).

  Dawson (Arnott), Winifred, ‘The Day I Met Monica’, About Larkin 31 (April 2011), pp. 5–7.

  Dyson, Brian (ed.), The Modern Academic Library: Essays in Memory of Philip Larkin (London: Library Association, 1988).

  Fowler, Margaret, ‘Larkin’s Library Recollected’, About Larkin 32 (October 2011), p. 11.

  Hamburger, Michael, Philip Larkin (London: Enitharmon Press, 2002).

  Hartley, George (ed.), Philip Larkin – A Tribute: 1922–1985 (London: Marvell Press, 1988).

  Hartley, Jean, ‘Larkin, Love and Sex’, About Larkin 30 (October 2010), pp. 6–8.

  ——, Philip Larkin, the Marvell Press and Me (1989; London: Sumach Press, 1993).

  Hughes, Noel, ‘The Young Mr Larkin’, in Anthony Thwaite (ed.), Larkin at Sixty (London: Faber & Faber, 1982), pp. 17–22.

  Iles, Norman, ‘Our Group’, London Magazine, December/January 1999/2000, pp. 26–7.

  Keating, Peter, ‘Monica’, in Autobiography Tales (Edinburgh: Priskus, 2013, pp. 77–155).

  Moon, Brenda, ‘Working with Philip Larkin’, About Larkin 8 (October 1999), pp. 5–11.

  Phillips, Moira, ‘Larkin Recollected’, About Larkin 33 (April 2012), p. 11.

  Raban, Jonathan, Coasting (London, Collins Harvill, 1986).

  ——, ‘Philip Larkin’, in Driving Home: An American Scrapbook (London: Picador, 2010).

  Rowland, Yvonne, ‘Remembering Monica Jones in Leicester’, About Larkin 30 (October 2010), pp. 18–19.

  Saville, John, Memoirs from the Left (London: Merlin Press, 2003).

  Sharpe, Norman, and A. K. B. Evans (eds), ‘Monica at Leicester’, About Larkin 12 (October 2001), pp. 17–19.

  Siverns (Bowman), Ruth, ‘Philip Larkin at Wellington 1943–1946’, About Larkin 1 (April 1996), pp. 4–5.

  Thwaite, Anthony (ed.), Larkin at Sixty (London: Faber & Faber, 1982).
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  Watt, R. J. C., ‘“Scragged by embryo-Leavises”: Larkin reading his poems’, Critical Survey 1.2 (1989), pp. 172–5.

  5. Biographies

  Bradford, Richard, First Boredom, Then Fear: The Life of Philip Larkin (London: Peter Owen, 2005).

  ——, The Odd Couple: The Curious Friendship between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin (London: Robson Press, 2012).

  Motion, Andrew, Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life (London: Faber & Faber, 1993).

  6. Select Secondary Sources

  About Larkin (Journal of the Philip Larkin Society) (April 1996–April 2014); nos. 1–6 ed. Jean Hartley; nos. 7–14 ed. James Booth; no. 15 ed. Jean Hartley and Maeve Brennan; no. 16 ed. Jean Hartley; nos. 17–21 ed. Belinda Hakes; no. 22 ed. Janet Brennan; nos. 23–37 ed. James Booth and Janet Brennan.

  Alvarez, A., ‘The New Poetry, or Beyond the Gentility Principle’, Introduction to The New Poetry (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), pp. 17–28.

  Amis, Martin, ‘Philip Larkin, His Work and Life’, introduction to Philip Larkin: Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 2011), pp. ix–xxiii.

  Avis (Strang), Patricia, Playing the Harlot or Mostly Coffee (London: Virago, 1996).

  Baron, Michael (ed.), Larkin with Poetry: English Association Conference Papers (Leicester: English Association, 1997).

  Bennett, Alan, ‘Alas! Deceived’, in Stephen Regan (ed.), Philip Larkin: Contemporary Critical Essays (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 226–49.

  Blackburn, Simon, ‘English Tombs and Larkin’, About Larkin 36 (October 2013), pp. 7–11.

  Booth, James, ‘The Card-Players’, in Michael Hanke (ed.), Fourteen English Sonnets: Critical Essays, Studien zur anglistischen Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaft (28) (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007), pp. 169–77.

  ——, ‘Competing Pulses: Secular and Sacred in Hughes, Larkin and Plath’, Critical Survey 12.3 (2000), pp. 4–27.

  ——, ‘Larkin as Animal Poet’, About Larkin 22 (October 2006), pp. 5–9.

  —— (ed.), New Larkins for Old (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).

  ——, Philip Larkin: The Poet’s Plight (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

  ——, Philip Larkin: Writer (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992).

  ——, ‘“Snooker” at the Seaside: The Birthday Walk in Scarborough’, About Larkin 16 (October 2003), pp. 29–31.

  ——, ‘Sydney Larkin’s Little Hitler’, About Larkin 29 (April 2010), p. 27.