Philip Larkin, poet and librarian, led an uneventful life. He never married, he virtually never went abroad, and he disliked appearing in public: almost alone among post-war British poets, he gave no readings of his work, and the rare occasions when he had to give a talk in public filled him with preparatory nervousness. His studiously ordinary and ordered life was shot through with a persistent melancholy: his letters are filled with remarks like ‘I suddenly see myself as a freak and a failure, and my way of life as a farce. I suppose work normally shields one's eyes from home truths of this nature’ (SL 329). Sometimes a melancholy wit enlivens such sentiments: ‘I think autumn and winter are better than spring and summer in that they are not supposed to be enjoyable, isn't that it?’ (SL 356). He had the reputation of a surly recluse, and did much to cultivate this, occasionally confessing ruefully that it was as much of a pose as making public appearances – only much pleasanter. Yet he had many friends, and most people who knew him found him thoughtful, gracious, and, on occasion, very funny. This depressive, worried, self-mocking personality is of interest to us because it belonged to the finest English poet of his time.

Larkin was born in 1922 in Coventry, where his father Sydney was City Treasurer. A deliberately unimpressive account of Coventry is given in his self-mocking poem ‘I Remember, I Remember’, which describes the places where his ‘childhood was unspent’ (‘And here we have that splendid family | I never ran towhen I got depressed’). He had one sister, ten years older, but said that he always felt like an only child. Some of his comments on his family are startling. ‘Marriage seems a revolting institution,’ he wrote when he was 21, ‘unless the parties have enough money to keep reasonably distant from each other – imagine sharing a bedroom with a withered old woman.’