Philip Larkin

The statue of Larkin in Hull

Philip Arthur Larkin CH, CBE, FRSL (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was a English poet and novelist.^[1]

Larkin was born and raised in Coventry, Warwickshire, where he attended primary and secondary school. He graduated from St John's College, Oxford with a double first in English language and literature.

Larkin spent the latter years of his life in Hull, where he was a librarian at the University of Hull. Larkin died in Hull, Humberside, of oesophageal cancer.

Philip Larkin Media

Spinny -Poultney Road -Coventry 28y08
This second-floor flat overlooking Pearson Park in Hull was Larkin's rented accommodation from 1956 to 1974 (photo 2008).
105 Newland Park, Hull, was Larkin's home from 1974 to his death in 1985 (photo 2008).
Philip Larkin -headstone at Cottingham municipal cemetery, near Hull, England-24May2008
William Butler Yeats, whose poetry was an influence on Larkin in the mid-1940s
The poetry of Thomas Hardy was the influence that helped Larkin reach his mature style.
This tomb in Chichester Cathedral of the Earl of Arundel and his wife Eleanor of Lancaster was the inspiration for Larkin's poem "An Arundel Tomb"
S. K. Chatterjee talks of Larkin's responsiveness to economic, socio-political and cultural factors. In "Here" Larkin writes of "residents from raw estates, brought down / The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys".
Sculpture of Larkin as a toad, displayed during the Larkin 25 Festival in 2010, Kingston upon Hull