Philip Larkin’s darkly funny and heart-breaking verse made him a defining voice of the post-war generation. He was England’s ...

The poems of British master Philip Larkin (1922–1985), one of the great mid-century poets in English, have had a frustrating life since the death of their author: this is the third book of Larkin ...

Have you ever had too much of a good thing? Last week, we only had one Labour Prime Minister. This week, we have two, writes ...

Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. Not everything about Thwaite’s edition is so muddled, of course. Not everything about Thwaite’s edition is so ...

There is no direct train from London to Hull, in Yorkshire. You have to change at Doncaster. Philip Larkin used to claim that he went on working there because literary curiosity-seekers (not to speak ...

The author of the immortal opening couplet, "They fuck you up, your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do," the poet Philip Larkin (1922-85) was in 2008 voted "the greatest British writer" of ...

The world of Philip Larkin’s verse is far from glamorous. His natural habitat was English suburbia, a realm of grey dawns, hollow afternoons and low horizons. He spent most of his adult life working ...

The story of Philip Larkin has been told many times, said John Carey in The Sunday Times. John Sutherland’s new book, however, is “singular” in focusing on the poet’s long-term girlfriend, Monica ...

For 26 years, its existence and virtually all its text have been secrets kept by one person — his former secretary and lover Betty Mackereth. The untitled poem, imbued with Larkinesque sadness about ...

Rick Gekoski tells the remarkable stories behind five missing art works. Should Philip Larkin's final wish, that his diaries be destroyed, have been honoured? And what was in them?

The author of the immortal opening couplet, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do," the poet Philip Larkin (1922-85) was in 2008 voted “the greatest British writer" of ...