The first article on Philip Larkin ever to appear in the British press was published anonymously in the Times Educational Supplement, once the younger sister paper to the TLS, in 1956, when the poet was thirty-four years old. In his reply to a letter from an American professor who had written in 1958 to ask him for some biographical details, Larkin wrote:

The best and indeed the only source of information about me is an article in the Times Educational Supplement on 13 July 1956 which I assume you will be able to see. This gives details of biography, education and publications, along with a rather unpleasant photograph . . . . If necessary I could supply a copy of the article I mentioned, but since I have only a very small and diminishing stock of these I should be relieved if you could find a copy or photocopy within the United States.

This article was written by me – with considerable input from Larkin himself. At the time I was a young trainee journalist on the TES, in those days a forcing house of journalistic talent under the inspiring editorship of Walter James, who had decided to brighten up the pages of this rather austere journal by carrying a series of profiles of the best young English poets of the day. He entrusted me with the task – largely, I suspect, because of my surname.

James consulted widely among prominent literary figures before making his selection of poets. He finally settled on Christopher Logue, Thom Gunn, John Wain and Philip Larkin. Among those whose advice he had sought were Kathleen Raine, John Lehmann and Geoffrey Grigson. Raine and Lehmann both “sponsored” Larkin, who, said Raine, “had a wider range of sensibility to human experiences than the other young poets”, adding quaintly that she was not certain how young he really was “but he is new to the world of poetry and young in that sense”. Lehmann said something even more perceptive: “He writes about rather small things in a big age. He is very quiet, somewhat tame, produces a slight feeling of monotony and repetitiousness, but is nevertheless the poet who will appeal more widely than any of the others to the middle-brow public”. James then gave me his written instructions. “1. Track down poet. 2. Interview him on Profile lines. Background, education etc. Order short unpublished poem. 3. Interview his sponsors for literary backchat. 4. Articles to appear on June 29, July 6, 13, 20 [1956].”

“Nobody knows much about me”, Larkin wrote to me about himself at the time, though his second volume of poems, The Less Deceived, had been published a few weeks earlier and received with enthusiasm by the more perceptive critics. (His first volume, The North Ship, published in 1945, had sunk almost without trace.) The Times included The Less Deceived in its list of The Year’s Outstanding Books. Andrew Motion, in his biography, called this “the decisive turning point in Philip Larkin’s career”. But the book was unobtainable in London so I wrote to the publisher, George Hartley, of the Marvell Press in Yorkshire. He had sold out of the book but managed to procure a copy for me from Collet’s bookshop in Hull. “They still had four left”, he wrote, “owing to their policy of hiding poetry in the cookery section.”

Larkin was not hard to track down. I found him one afternoon in May where numerous other questors on the Larkin trail were to find him until almost the end of his life – in the library of the University of Hull, to which he had been appointed Librarian the year before, at a salary of £1,550 per annum. Larkin emerged from a small room at the back of the building to greet me, looking remarkably like an attenuated version of the comedian Eric Morecambe, but a Morecambe on tranquillizers, suffused with a strange, cosmic melancholy from which flashes of humour burst from time to time. He struck me as already middle-aged, but then so do most people in their thirties when one is only twenty-five. I also noticed that he spoke with a slight stammer which made him seem diffident – deceptively so, as I was soon to discover. I asked him my carefully prepared questions, scribbled some of his answers on a piece of paper (I did not have shorthand and there were no dictation machines in those days) and talked in his office for two hours. I then invited him to dinner on The Times at any restaurant of his choice. He said he would prefer beer and sandwiches and, doffing a curious tweed deer-stalker hat, led me to the saloon bar of a nearby pub where we continued talking until well into the night.

Having overcome his initial shyness he was unexpectedly articulate. Our conversation became all the more relaxed when we discovered that we had been at neighbouring colleges at Oxford, St John’s in his case and Trinity in mine, which had recently celebrated their joint quatercentenary. We ranged over a large number of topics, on all of which he spoke with obvious relish and little inhibition. I was the first journalist to have tracked him down, and this was the first interview he had ever given to the press; he was clearly going to make the most of it.

Larkin asked what other poets I was interviewing. When I told him, he diplomatically refrained from giving his opinion of Logue and Gunn, neither of whom he knew personally. He said he didn’t read much modern poetry and didn’t know much about modern poets except for John Wain and Kingsley Amis, his contemporaries at St John’s. “They are friends of long standing. But they concentrate more on their dislikes while I concentrate more on my likes.” At the head of his list of likes, he put “listening to jazz and drinking beer” followed by cricket, cycling, swimming and “finding out about writers”. He mentioned particularly Beatrix Potter: “She never went abroad in the whole of her life which is a point of sympathy between us”. He then gave me a list of his dislikes: “Work, cruelty to animals, literature based on other literature, poems about poems or poets, going bald, speaking in public, ‘filthy Mozart’, drama (though I once went to see The Boyfriend)”. I told him that John Betjeman, who was a friend of my father-in-law, the writer S. P. B. Mais, had made the speech at my wedding at Christ Church, Oxford, the previous year. I had clearly pushed the right button – not an easy feat with Larkin – and he glowed visibly. Betjeman, he said, was his favourite poet. “He is also the greatest living English poet together with T. S. Eliot. But Eliot is too obscure while Betjeman communicates directly with the general reader.”

I was particularly struck by Larkin’s loathing of work, including, I suspected, his job as a librarian, although he carefully did not specify this. We discussed his career and much of what he told me I included in my profile. He said that on going down from Oxford he could have taught or gone into the Civil Service. “I did not want to teach because I stammered and the Civil Service turned me down. I even considered journalism but I could not write to order.” I omitted, for obvious reasons, what he told me about his first job at Wellington in Shropshire. “I saw and applied for a job as librarian at Wellington”, he said.

"The last man had scrubbed the floor and stoked the boiler but I refused to do this. I was accepted nonetheless. This was a stupid choice that has determined the course of my life ever since but I didn’t have the courage to chuck it up. My two-and-three-quarter years at Wellington were the most unhappy of my life – and the most creative."

(I did not know then that it was while he was at Wellington that he met and broke up with Ruth Bowman, the only woman to whom he was ever formally engaged.)

"I hate work. Libraries are a quite pleasant way of earning a living. Dismal prospects though! Jobs connected with books like publishing are not good for creative writing. That’s why libraries, all technical and administration, are so good."

He added wistfully: “It’s too late to change now”, and, only half in jest:

"I’d like to have been a solid, uncomplicated, second-rate novelist producing a novel a year. And not 'Crouch in the fo’c’sle, stubbly with goodness'. My only ambition now is to write more, to write better and to live without working, which is immensely distasteful to me. I’d like to earn enough to retire on from football pools, which I do every autumn."

I asked him if that really was his only ambition. His answer was that, as he had spent most of his life in bedsitting rooms and was still in one (“the only life I have known”), he would also like to achieve his two private symbols of luxury, “my own lavatory and a daily copy of The Times”. Greatly daring, I asked him if he contemplated marriage (I knew nothing then of his tangled love life or of his difficulties with girls). He said he certainly intended to. “I’m not a confirmed bachelor but I rather enjoy the rattlesnake image.”

By the time we finished, I had received full answers to all my questions. It was nearly midnight when I returned to my hotel. I felt that I had just been with one of the most remarkable persons I had ever met and that it was important to record as much as possible of our talk. I jotted down a few notes but soon fell asleep. The following morning, on the long train journey back to London, I recorded everything else I could remember in a sprawling scribble made almost illegible by the jolts of the train, and I have those same notes in front of me as I write this.

What happened next was an object lesson in what no aspiring young journalist should ever do if he wants his copy to reach the printed page intact. Before we parted Larkin asked imperiously if he could be shown a draft of the profile before it went to print. Too inexperienced, as well as overawed by Larkin’s persona, I readily agreed. I did not suspect that this would lead to a very intense relationship that would last for two months. A few days after my return to London, I received a letter from Larkin with some afterthoughts about our meeting – typed on his office typewriter on flimsy paper of the poorest quality (as were most of his letters to me), demonstrating to his conscience, no doubt, that he was not abusing library facilities. He was obviously excited – but also nervous – about the forthcoming profile.

University Library Hull 29 May, 1956

Dear Mr Shakespeare, I remember promising to send you in writing an account of what I conceive to be the purpose of my poetry, though I think I was possibly over-confident when I did so. Such explanations usually read very heavily. However, put it this way: I have no ideas on what poetry is, in the abstract, but I have sometimes asked myself in the past what exactly I am doing when I write a poem. Most people say that the purpose of poetry is communication: that sounds as if one could be contented simply by telling somebody whatever it is one has noticed, felt or perceived. I feel it is a kind of permanent communication better called preservation, since one’s deepest impulse in writing (or, I must admit, painting or composing) is to my mind not “I must tell everybody about that” (i.e. responsibility to other people) but “I must stop that from being forgotten if I can” (i.e. responsibility towards subject). When writing a poem I am trying to construct a verbal device or machine which will, upon reading, render up the emotion I originally experienced to as many people as possible for as long as possible. You’ll remember I called it a slot machine into which the reader inserts the penny of his attention. Of course, the process of preservation does imply communication, since that is the only way an experience can be preserved, and that explains why obscurity is so often a disadvantage; the distinction between communication and preservation is one of motive, and I think the latter word gives a very proper emphasis to the language-as-preserver rather than language-as-means-of-communication. In other words it makes it sound harder, which it is! I forget if you asked me whether I thought poetry important: I’m afraid my opinion on it would be about as valuable as that of a beaver upon dams. It’s certainly important to me, but I doubt if the world would miss it much. All the same I can’t imagine how people exist without practising some form of art.

I hope you are not cooking up too villainous a caricature: I think of myself as dignified, melancholy and amusing, and shall certainly feel impelled to censor remarks giving a contrary impression. Probably it would be unwise to say too much about my job. After all, any “artist” with a profession is bound to have an ambivalent attitude towards it: one loves it sometimes for not being one’s art, and hates it sometimes for the same reason. I don’t think that, if one needs money, being an artist is sufficient excuse for shirking the job that feeds one, and I try to do mine conscientiously for that reason alone. Another thing that might be said is that librarianship, with its blend of administration and academic interest, is one of the most varied of egg-head professions. The best thing to do is to try to be utterly schizoid about it all – using each personality as a refuge from the other.

I’d rather like to get in something about my disliking to speak in public – that will stop people asking me to lecture to the Scilly Isles Poetry Society for expenses, and is perfectly true anyway. Something like my childhood being comfortable rather than happy, and always spoilt by a stammer I was always fearfully self-conscious about, which has left me with a hatred of speaking to more than three people at a time.

I am getting a photograph done locally this week, so if you can hang on until next week I may be able to send you a portrait and not bother your staff photographer. On the other hand, if they are unsuccessful we can let the arrangement stand.

I hope you get on all right with Gunn père [Herbert Gunn, then Editor of the Daily Sketch] and the mysterious Logue. I enjoyed the evening we had together.

Yours sincerely,

Philip Larkin

For a few weeks the poet bombarded me with letters and suggestions about his profile, all in beautiful, precise prose. The Larkin that emerges from this correspondence is an exceedingly pernickety individual. Something of a control freak, in today’s terms, he was clearly determined to seize the opportunity I had so rashly offered him to recast his image in the way he thought would appeal most to his as yet almost non-existent audience. He also displayed an underlying concern that nothing in the profile should upset his employers, his staff or his parents – in that order. The other three poets I had interviewed had given me complete freedom to write what I wanted and had no interest in seeing their profiles in draft. Larkin, on the contrary, niggled and quibbled every inch of the way, and in the end would only agree to the profile being published if it met all his requirements. He was also almost obsessively interested in the photograph that was to accompany it. “I wonder which picture you chose? Standing, sitting reading catalogue, or staring suspiciously over right shoulder?”

I wrote to Larkin at the beginning of June to remind him that he had agreed to provide an unpublished poem to accompany his profile, and could not resist telling him that, when I interviewed Christopher Logue the week before, Logue had come to see me at my flat in Hampstead and had spotted in my bookcase a book called Lust by Count Palmiro Vicarion, a crude but well-written piece of pornography. “I wrote that”, Logue had said, to my astonishment, revealing how he had sustained a precarious living in France by writing pornographic books for the Olympia Press in Paris: something that I sensed would appeal to Larkin, although I knew nothing at the time of his interest in pornography. On June 9, Larkin wrote me one of his rare letters in his own handwriting:

My dear Shakespeare,

Many thanks for the letter. You shall have a poem without fail before 20 June. Give me a day’s warning of the photographer, won’t you? And send him before the 20th, because I go (I hope) to the Lords’ Test Match then.

How funny about Logue. I bet he’s the biggest sham on earth. See the letter from his patroness in the TLS reproving us for not having Muses?

Yours ever,

Philip Larkin

Larkin wrote to me again three days later enclosing the poem that I had commissioned; one of his most delightful poems, it has been known as “First Sight” since it was republished under that title in The Whitsun Weddings (1964), though it was for now called “At First”.

University Library Hull 12 June 1956

Dear Mr Shakespeare,

You will no doubt be amused to know that your photographer resolved into a local man I had inspected and rejected! He spent most of today here, much to the entertainment of everyone, and at the end of it I felt as if I never wanted to be photographed again as long as I live. I am to see the proofs tomorrow, and he intends to send them off to you the same day. I should think I shall look like a famous headmaster or the chap in let-me-be-your-father advertisements. However, he took a great deal of trouble and was obviously impressed with the nature of his commission. I had to steer him off the notion that I was appearing in a series entitled Famous British Librarians, without telling him what I was being photographed for.

I am enclosing the little poem I spoke of. It is very simple, I know, but I hope it runs easily and carries the power to make its point on the reader. It is one of the sorts of poem I want to be associated with.

Yours sincerely

Philip Larkin

A week later I sent Larkin my typescript of his profile, asking him to mark any alterations or emendations in pencil and then return it to me with all speed. I added that though I made no apologies for what I had written, he should not hesitate to point out anything that he considered offensive. On re-reading my original piece over fifty years later, I am satisfied that it was an authentic snapshot of the unknown thirty-four-year-old poet on the threshold of fame – authentic in the sense that everything I had written was based on the exact words he had used during our long conversation. But Larkin clearly felt otherwise. His reaction, by return of post, was to damn me with faint praise and to say, ominously, that he might send a few corrections.

The University of Hull 27 June 1956

My dear Shakespeare,

Your letter, article, photographs and book arrived safely this morning, and I am returning the last-mentioned duly autographed. It is, I notice, a peculiar copy as the title-page precedes the half-title, which is unusual, though I don’t know if it makes it any more valuable.

I think you have done very well with the meagre information I was able to supply you with when we met, but I must confess it presents me in a light which, though probably accurate enough, is one I am always trying to evade. I am also a little concerned at the amount of space devoted to my feelings about work! I think, if you don’t mind, I might send you a few suggestions designed to correct these two reservations, and any others that occur to me.

With all good wishes,

Yours sincerely

Philip Larkin

Larkin must then have stayed up all night to draft his “suggestions”, because they were posted next day under cover of a long explanatory letter.

The University of Hull 28th June 1956

My dear Shakespeare,

Here is your article back again, with many notes and comments. First I should say how I appreciate the difficulty of your task, and the skill with which you have used the little knowledge of me I was able to put over. All the same, I do have some rather serious reservations about it, which I should like you to consider. Firstly, I’m afraid we really must cut the less discreet parts, about hating work and so on. It’s all right for these other tramps, but I’ve got to keep my “persona” in this University, if not for my own sake then for the sake of my staff. Therefore you’ll see I’ve elided or toned down anything along these lines, though I'm quite aware you were in most cases only using my own words. Secondly, and this is a bit less clear-cut, I think you have drawn a picture of a very feeble negative kind of creature, typical life-hating bookworm, which I am most loath to accept. It seems to me that if you are going to spend so much space on a writer, you must try to show him as something like commensurate with his work. If he isn’t, then write about the work and not the man. Your account of me seems so flat and negative and downright dreary that I feel it can only do me harm. Further, at times a kind of amused note almost of patronage creeps in – the pterodactyl of course! – at this mild vague melancholy object, which again I should like cut out. (In fact the whole “style” of the article is a little less serious than I had expected, but that is between you and your editor.) You may say on this point that that is how I presented myself to you! Well, it isn’t how I want to present myself to your readers.

I’ve made two kinds of marks on your typescript – plain suggestions for alterations of single words, and underlinings which mean that the passage in question is redrafted in my notes under the number that is pencilled in the margin. (The last three paragraphs I have redrafted entirely.) All the second class constitute serious requests that the text is changed, if not to what I write myself, then to something at least with the same emphasis. Now of course I’m not quite sure how you’ll feel about this; it may be that you were expecting some such co-operation in producing the final version. If so, splendid. If on the other hand you feel restive about so many corrections, then I can only suggest I am postponed until such time as we can reach an agreed text. In either case, could you please let me know how you feel BY MIDDAY ON TUESDAY 3rd JULY? After lunch on that day I go on holiday for a fortnight, in Skye.

I am especially anxious that this article should present me in a reasonably serious light, as so far nobody knows much about me and this will no doubt be the source of a great deal of future reference. In my redraftings I have tried to keep more or less to the spirit of the general level, and I hope they aren’t too pompous.

Anyway, let me know, will you? I won’t say any more till I know how you feel. Needless to say there’s nothing personal in all this – hope it doesn’t sound too brusque.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Philip Larkin

SUGGESTED REDRAFTINGS 1. [I had written: “Into it had been poured all the unsatisfied vague yearnings of the English bed-sitting room classes.”] I think this is a little unjust – don’t pay too much attention to R. Murphy. [In August 1955, the Irish poet Richard Murphy had edited and introduced a BBC broadcast of new poetry by Philip Larkin, Theodore Roethke and Valentine Iremonger.] Can’t you say something a bit more laudatory? “Each of its twenty-nine poems is a sharp intelligible expression of thought and experience typical of our time, yet reaching back to the traditional material of lyric poetry.”

2. [“With Larkin poetry is on its way back to the middle-brow public.”] I don’t mind middle-brow but wouldn’t “general” be less derogatory?

3. [“His childhood, which he has described in one of his poems, was bleakly uneventful, ‘a forgotten boredom’; his schooldays, too, were undistinguished.”] I’d sooner this were rephrased to sound less churlish to my parents and more interesting generally. “His childhood in this industrial centre was remarkable for containing few of childhood’s traditional experiences (a fact ironically commented on in his poem ‘I remember, I remember’) and was comfortably spent for the most part in the elaboration of complex private board-games and reading detective novels.”

4. [“I was very stupid until I got into the sixth form and could concentrate on English, the thing I was best at.”] I feel this is just a bit frumpish – I’ve heard it said so often, mostly by frightful fools. Could the bracketed parts – “got into the sixth form and” and “the thing I was best at” – be cut?

5. [“and a vague distaste for the university.”] Sounds dreary. “. . . and a desire to do something and be somewhere very different.”

6. [“He belonged to a literary coterie at St. John’s that included Kingsley Amis, John Wain and Alan Ross.”] These people weren’t all there at exactly the same time: could you rephrase it along the lines of “his contemporaries at St. John’s included Kingsley Amis, John Wain, Bruce Montgomery (‘Edmund Crispin’) and Alan Ross.” Do put Bruce in. He taught me an awful lot, and is pretty well-known.

7. [“Unable to join the army for medical reasons when his university career had come to an end, he tried, unsuccessfully, to enter the Civil Service. He thought of teaching but dismissed the idea because of his slight stammer. One day, at his wits’ end, he saw an advertisement for a librarian at the public library in Shropshire. He applied successfully and decided to accept the post which he held for nearly three years. ‘That decision determined the course of my very unexciting life.’ Ever since then he has been a librarian at one place or another; and now, he will tell you a little ruefully, it is too late to change. Not that he is unhappy in his job. On the contrary, he finds librarianship, with its blend of administration and academic interest, quite a pleasant way of earning a living.”] I know this is what I said, but it does give that ineffectual feeling that I want to play down! How about “Approaching the problem of employment with magnificent impartiality, he applied almost at random for a number of jobs, and found himself Librarian of the small Shropshire town of Wellington, where he stayed for nearly three years, finding out what people really do read. ‘This,’ he says, ‘seems to have determined the course of my life’, for ever since then he has remained in the profession, and now, he will tell you a little ruefully, it has become a habit. Not that he . . . .”

8. [“But the tiresome thing is that a living has to be earned at all, for he regards work with extreme loathing.” Delete! “Every autumn, therefore, like a true child of his age, he turns to football pools in the hope of relieving himself once and for all of the intolerable burden of toil.”] I’m afraid this strikes rather a jazzy note for one in my position – and I’m afraid I would prefer to leave out the football pools. Couldn’t we say: “Like most spare-time writers, however, his attitude to his professional occupation is ambivalent. It can provide new contacts, preoccupations and experiences – in short, new material – but it can also demand so much time and nervous energy that only the most insistent poems get written at all. An uneasy schizophrenic truce, he says, becomes quite easy after a few years, and probably produces better results (from the literary point of view) than undisciplined idleness. Again like most spare-time writers, however, he sometimes feels he would like the chance to make sure.”

9. [“His years at Wellington were the unhappiest of his life and at the same time the most creative. In 1945 he published The North Ship, a slim volume of poems, followed in 1946 by Jill, his first novel . . . .”] Again I feel it could be put a little more thrillingly! “At Wellington he first settled down steadily to writing, and after a day dispensing murders, lovers and westerns (plus an eager though somewhat erratic service to the leavening minority) would write from nine to midnight in lodgings. In 1945 he published ‘The North Ship’, a volume of poems ‘equally compounded of W. B. Yeats and of having nothing much to write about’, followed in 1946 by ‘Jill’, his first novel, which he reckons marks the [first] appearance of the provincial scholarship-boy in post-war literature. His second . . . .”

10. [“Since A Girl in Winter Philip Larkin has found himself incapable of writing another novel. This is all the more curious as until 1950 he thought of himself primarily as a novelist. Now he thinks otherwise and has contented himself by trying to put into his poems the essential elements of the novels he might have written.”] “At this time he was quite certain that he would continue writing novels, and has never quite understood what caused him to stop; but about 1948 he found he could say what he wanted much more quickly in poems, which benefited in turn from his extravert [sic] training as a novelist. Ezra Pound said ‘poetry should be as well written as prose’. Larkin thinks it should also be as interesting.”

11. [“In 1950 he moved to the Queen’s University of Belfast as sub-librarian, where he remained until last year when he was appointed to his present post as librarian at the University of Hull.”] I’d like something said about how much I liked Ireland, if possible. “. . . University of Hull. He immediately took to the idiosyncratic, Victorian town of Belfast (‘a good place to be schizophrenic in’) and felt more at home there than he has ever done in England. Soon after arriving there he produced a second collection . . . .”

12. [“His output rarely exceeds four poems a year, and his fear is now that he is about to enter a season of poetic drought.”] Maybe, but I don’t especially want it advertised! Could you add something like “ . . . a year; many more are begun, but the majority die of neglect – due partly to lack of time, partly to a probably mistaken theory that a good poem will get itself written in despite of everything.”

13. [“When writing a poem”, he explains, “I am trying to construct a verbal device which will, upon reading, render up the emotion I originally experienced.”] I’m not sure this will mean much to your readers. I rather wish the remark about the poet’s responsibility being to the experience rather than to the reader had gone in, but never mind.

14. [“He will tell you, almost apologetically, that he knows little about contemporary poetry, though he admits to being an ardent admirer of John Betjeman.”] And I do like Kingsley. Could you add “Betjeman, and says he wishes Kingsley Amis would write more poems, if he could do it without writing fewer novels.”

Larkin finally turned his attention to the heart of my profile, the character sketch that I had composed with some care:

“In his outward appearance Philip Larkin is the most English of men. Tall, balding, bespectacled, he walks with a dignified stoop and eschews flashy clothes. With his deerstalker pulled down firmly over his ears and his umbrella anxiously sniffing the air for rain, he gives the impression of a kindly pterodactyl for ever trying to take wing but for ever tethered to the ground by earthly care. Though habitually grave, his expression is lit up by frequent flashes of wistful humour and faithfully portrays his outlook on life, which is best described as a “wistful melancholy”. He has no religion; nor is he even remotely interested in politics. His two private symbols of earthly luxury – a daily copy of The Times and the possession of his own lavatory –”

(“No, no, no! Sorry!”, Larkin scribbled furiously in the margin)

“have always been denied to him for one reason or another, and he sees no immediate possibility of attaining them. Apart from his writing he has few interests . . . . It would be hard to meet anyone more modest and less self-seeking than Philip Larkin. He has only two ambitions, one for himself and one for poetry in general. For himself, he wants above all ‘to write more, to write better and to live without working’. As for his fellow poets, he hopes fervently that they will emerge from their isolation and compete more on the level of entertainment in this technological age. ‘Poetry,’ he believes, ‘should keep the child from its T.V. set and the old man from his pub.’ Philip Larkin may yet do both.”

Even today, I consider this a more accurate portrait of the poet as he then was than his own carefully contrived re-write. But his response was one I had by now come to expect:

Oh dear, this final character-sketch! I do want to sound less of a simple-minded spineless book-drunk, if you can manage it; I want to sound more guarded, more complex, more like a person who could possibly write a good poem. It’s absurd to write a character-sketch of oneself, but I’ll try anything to avoid wearing the particular garment you’ve woven for me. Using the properties you’ve mentioned as far as possible, I’d prefer something along these lines: “In his appearance, Philip Larkin carries an English absence of the poetic. Tall and balding, he chooses his clothes with care, only a favourite tweed fishing-hat suggesting that he is not content to pass unnoticed in a crowd. Though habitually serious, his expression is lit up by flashes of frequently-unkind amusement and faithfully portrays his outlook on life, which has been well described as ‘a vivacious melancholy’. He disclaims any religious or political beliefs, saying that when he tries to hold opinions ‘they always get away’, but thinks this less important in a writer than a continuous appreciation and response to people, situations and things. In common with most of his generation, his twin bogeys are pretentiousness and self-deception. Apart from writing, his life (‘which probably looks very dull from the outside’) is spent reading favourite authors (Mary McCarthy, Beatrix Potter, Barnes), watching cricket, listening to jazz of the right kind and travelling about seeing old friends and new places – but the places are never outside the British Isles: a mild xenophobe, he never goes abroad if he can help it, and reads foreign literature only in translation. His great dislikes are cruelty to animals, and speaking in public, which he will go to almost any lengths to avoid.

It would be hard to meet anyone more modest and less self-seeking than Philip Larkin. He has only two ambitions, one for himself and one for poetry in general. For himself, he wants above all ‘to write more, to write better and to have the leisure to do so if I can’. As for his fellow poets he would like to see a more general realization that the neglect of poetry today is not entirely the fault of the reading public, and wishes they would set about making their poems more entertaining. ‘Poetry’, he believes, ‘should keep the child from its T.V. set and the old man from his pub.’ Philip Larkin may yet do both.”

In view of Larkin’s tight deadline and my own editor’s deadline for publication on July 13, I did not feel inclined to argue the toss and sent Larkin a short note saying that I would incorporate most of his suggestions. The article that went to press was, in effect, my skeleton onto which Larkin had put his own flesh. Why was Larkin, unlike his fellow poets, so obsessive about his profile? The clue lies perhaps in his words to that American professor in 1958: “The best and indeed the only source of information about me”. My own guess is that he seized this as the perfect opportunity to say exactly what he wanted about himself and his writing as he stood on the cusp of fame, and to direct all future inquirers after him to this article so that he could avoid submitting to further interviews. There must have come a moment when the penny dropped into the slot machine, as he put it to me, that “this [would] no doubt be the source of a great deal of future reference”. Is it too fanciful to see, in his long letter and enclosures of June 29, Larkin labouring to create his own version of his life and work almost as if he were structuring a poem?

Larkin went off on his holiday to Skye, the article duly appeared and I heard nothing further from him. A few months later my Editor asked me to write to him to request a poem for the Christmas issue of the Times Educational Supplement. Larkin replied immediately. This letter, the last I received from him, marked the end of our relationship. I went to live abroad soon afterwards and never met Larkin again.

University Library Hull 6 November 1956

My dear Shakespeare,

Thank you very much for your letter of 31st October. It is very kind of you to think of me in connection with the Christmas poem but, after considering the suggestion, I feel it is so unlikely that I should be moved to complete anything worth printing on the subject I had better decline the offer with many thanks. You will be amused to hear that I have moved into a proper flat, and consequently one of my symbols of luxury is well within my grasp. I suppose I shall have to see about ordering the other soon.

With all good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Philip Larkin

© John Shakespeare. Philip Larkin letters © 2009 The Estate of Philip Larkin, by permission of the Society of Authors on behalf of the estate.

John Shakespeare was on the editorial staff of the Times Educational Supplement, 1955–1956, and of The Times 1956–1959. He subsequently entered the Diplomatic Service. He was Ambassador to Peru, from 1983–1987 and to Morocco, 1987–1990.

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