0:00:02 > 0:00:04This programme contains some strong language
0:00:10 > 0:00:14Oxford in the early eighties wasn't perhaps the most natural place
0:00:14 > 0:00:17to meet a librarian from Hull.
0:00:17 > 0:00:21But the man I first met here at All Souls College also happened
0:00:21 > 0:00:26to be the most popular and celebrated poet in Britain at that time,
0:00:26 > 0:00:28Philip Larkin.
0:00:33 > 0:00:36For a long time, I'd loved the poems.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39The Whitsun Weddings, Church Going,
0:00:39 > 0:00:42An Arundel Tomb with its memorable last line,
0:00:42 > 0:00:45"What will survive of us is love."
0:00:45 > 0:00:49I'd loved them because Larkin used language with such skill,
0:00:49 > 0:00:55so carefully, to such powerful effect, to evoke landscape and place,
0:00:55 > 0:00:58telling truths which had never quite been told before,
0:00:58 > 0:01:01or never in such stark terms.
0:01:21 > 0:01:23After our first encounter in Oxford,
0:01:23 > 0:01:26I wanted to get to know Larkin better.
0:01:26 > 0:01:27So, we met up again,
0:01:27 > 0:01:31and exchanged letters which I have donated to the Bodleian Library.
0:01:31 > 0:01:37The man revealed here is morose and pessimistic but also witty and funny.
0:01:37 > 0:01:40A man who enjoyed a drink and loved his jazz.
0:01:40 > 0:01:42Someone I very much liked.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47But my feelings about Larkin changed.
0:01:47 > 0:01:52Seven years after he died, there appeared his Selected Letters.
0:01:52 > 0:01:55And, a year after that, a biography by Andrew Motion.
0:01:57 > 0:02:00They revealed a man that I felt I hadn't known
0:02:00 > 0:02:03and found it very hard to like.
0:02:03 > 0:02:08Here was another Larkin, sour, two-faced, two-timing,
0:02:08 > 0:02:13crudely misogynistic, racist and coarse.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17Like others I reacted harshly to this other Larkin
0:02:17 > 0:02:22and wrote, as the young do, some judgmental, angry things about him.
0:02:22 > 0:02:26'Now, I'm older, hopefully wiser,
0:02:26 > 0:02:30'painfully aware that good and bad can exist in one person,
0:02:30 > 0:02:32'especially a writer.
0:02:32 > 0:02:34'So, it seems the right time for me to look again
0:02:34 > 0:02:37'at these different sides to Larkin,
0:02:37 > 0:02:39'exploring the extremes of his character
0:02:39 > 0:02:43'to try and understand this most complex and paradoxical man.
0:02:43 > 0:02:47'And, on this, the 30th anniversary of his death,
0:02:47 > 0:02:49'I want to go back and look at the work.
0:02:49 > 0:02:53'Back to those astonishing poems of his
0:02:53 > 0:02:57'by travelling back in time, and to the places that shaped them,
0:02:57 > 0:03:00'back to what I call Larkinland.'
0:03:24 > 0:03:27So, who was Philip Larkin?
0:03:27 > 0:03:30And where might our journey into Larkinland begin?
0:03:30 > 0:03:32First, to Hull.
0:03:41 > 0:03:46Hull was a bustling, busy port when Larkin first arrived here in 1955.
0:03:51 > 0:03:56The city's past can be discovered in its History Centre.
0:03:56 > 0:03:59But you can also find here all manner of curious artefacts
0:03:59 > 0:04:02that give clues to the poet.
0:04:04 > 0:04:06X-rays.
0:04:06 > 0:04:09These were taken during a health scare in 1969
0:04:09 > 0:04:12confirming his everlasting pessimism about death.
0:04:12 > 0:04:15I'm looking into the mind of a great poet.
0:04:16 > 0:04:18And here are his specs.
0:04:18 > 0:04:22Those hallmark specs by which the world defined Larkin.
0:04:24 > 0:04:26And here, Larkin the boozer.
0:04:26 > 0:04:28These are champagne corks.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32Each one labelled, by the good librarian,
0:04:32 > 0:04:35and they commemorate some birthday or award.
0:04:35 > 0:04:38This one is for the CBE in 1975.
0:04:38 > 0:04:41And, finally, what have we here?
0:04:42 > 0:04:47A little statue of Hitler that can raise his arm in salute.
0:04:47 > 0:04:52And this is a rather surprising clue from Larkin's childhood.
0:04:52 > 0:04:56It's a memento, inherited from his father,
0:04:56 > 0:05:01that connects to an upbringing Larkin had the genius to transform
0:05:01 > 0:05:05into poetic truth, in well-known but notorious lines of verse.
0:05:23 > 0:05:28So, how did Larkin's own upbringing, as it were, fuck him up?
0:05:28 > 0:05:31He was born in Coventry on 9 August 1922,
0:05:31 > 0:05:35the son of Sydney and Eva, with an older sister, Kitty.
0:05:37 > 0:05:39None of their early houses still remain
0:05:39 > 0:05:42but, where his father worked, at the old City Hall in Coventry,
0:05:42 > 0:05:45escaped war-time bombing.
0:05:45 > 0:05:48Here, Sydney Larkin paced the corridors
0:05:48 > 0:05:50and attended council meetings
0:05:50 > 0:05:53as Chief Treasurer of Coventry Corporation.
0:05:53 > 0:05:58Larkin senior was, by all accounts, autocratic, quick-tempered and rude.
0:05:58 > 0:06:01Yet, he was a superb administrator.
0:06:02 > 0:06:06A taste for efficiency led Sydney to be an admirer of
0:06:06 > 0:06:08how things seemed to be getting done in Germany
0:06:08 > 0:06:11before the Second World War.
0:06:11 > 0:06:14He took the shy, stammering Philip there twice,
0:06:14 > 0:06:18witnessed the Nuremberg rallies, and brought home souvenirs.
0:06:18 > 0:06:23Hence that little Hitler figurine that stood on the family mantelpiece.
0:06:28 > 0:06:32There is no doubt Sydney Larkin had a very curious influence on his son.
0:06:32 > 0:06:34It was a bookish home
0:06:34 > 0:06:39with quite racy works by Oscar Wilde and DH Lawrence on the shelves.
0:06:39 > 0:06:43The father taught the son never to believe in God.
0:06:43 > 0:06:48As for women, and especially Eva, his long-suffering wife,
0:06:48 > 0:06:53they were inferior beings, mere decoration.
0:06:53 > 0:06:58So, it was a miserable marriage punctuated by bickering and rows
0:06:58 > 0:07:00and no display of affection.
0:07:00 > 0:07:02Larkin once wrote to a friend -
0:07:02 > 0:07:07"The only married state I intimately know, ie, that of my parents,
0:07:07 > 0:07:09"is bloody hell."
0:07:12 > 0:07:17Perhaps his years at the King Henry VIII School were some kind of escape.
0:07:17 > 0:07:22Larkin was a pupil here from 1930 until the summer of 1940.
0:07:28 > 0:07:33His school reports have been kept and they make for fascinating reading.
0:07:33 > 0:07:35Mathematics, "rather slow".
0:07:35 > 0:07:39Geography, "hardly satisfactory".
0:07:39 > 0:07:44What's called Manual Training, "doesn't try, very weak"!
0:07:45 > 0:07:48But he was always good at English.
0:07:48 > 0:07:49And look at this report,
0:07:49 > 0:07:52it's a real prophecy by his English teacher when he was nine years old.
0:07:54 > 0:07:59"He has a true sense of rhythm and of beauty."
0:07:59 > 0:08:05His first published poems appeared in the school magazine, The Coventrian.
0:08:05 > 0:08:08This one's a really beautiful poem, I think.
0:08:08 > 0:08:13Spring Warning, it was published in 1940, the year he left the school.
0:08:13 > 0:08:17Written very much under the influence of WH Auden.
0:08:17 > 0:08:20"Refuse the sun that flashes from their high
0:08:20 > 0:08:24"Attic windows, and follow with their eye
0:08:24 > 0:08:27"The muffled boy with his compelling badge,
0:08:27 > 0:08:31"On his serious errand, riding to the gorge."
0:08:39 > 0:08:42Larkin went up to St John's College on a scholarship
0:08:42 > 0:08:45in the Michaelmas term of 1940.
0:08:45 > 0:08:48War-time Oxford wasn't terribly Brideshead.
0:08:48 > 0:08:52They had doubling up on rooms, basic food and drink.
0:08:53 > 0:08:56In the Canterbury quad, he had an attic room,
0:08:56 > 0:09:00the first of the lofty lodgings he would favour in later life.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04Professing an indifference to the war, he was nevertheless
0:09:04 > 0:09:07greatly relieved to fail his medical for active service
0:09:07 > 0:09:09because of bad eyesight.
0:09:11 > 0:09:15Larkin would later claim, "Oxford terrified me".
0:09:15 > 0:09:19But, to outward appearances, he seemed a confident young man.
0:09:19 > 0:09:22He formed a lifelong friendship with Kingsley Amis
0:09:22 > 0:09:26and, together, they were part of a heavy-drinking, laddish crowd.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29But from them was hidden another Larkin.
0:09:29 > 0:09:33Shy, prone to introspection and self-analysis,
0:09:33 > 0:09:36uncertain of his own sexuality.
0:09:36 > 0:09:42He had a gay crush on a medical student with whom he shared lodgings.
0:09:42 > 0:09:47He was so confused, he even took to analysing his own dreams.
0:09:47 > 0:09:51His first experience of heterosexual love had been a humiliating disaster.
0:09:53 > 0:09:57To his male friends, he expressed his fury against Oxford women
0:09:57 > 0:09:59in the coarsest terms.
0:09:59 > 0:10:02"They are shits," he said.
0:10:10 > 0:10:14During his time in Oxford, Larkin was never keen on going to lectures
0:10:14 > 0:10:16and he was rather bored in tutorials.
0:10:18 > 0:10:22And evidence about how he felt about poetry, old rather than new,
0:10:22 > 0:10:24can be found in the college library.
0:10:29 > 0:10:32This is a copy of the long Elizabethan poem
0:10:32 > 0:10:34Spenser's Faerie Queene.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38It's a college library book, so it's rather bad form that Larkin,
0:10:38 > 0:10:43the future librarian, has been scribbling in it in pencil.
0:10:43 > 0:10:46He makes a list of all the other long poems he's had to read
0:10:46 > 0:10:47for the English syllabus.
0:10:47 > 0:10:51"First, I thought Troilus And Cressida
0:10:51 > 0:10:54"was the most boring poem in English.
0:10:54 > 0:10:56"Then I thought Beowulf was.
0:10:56 > 0:10:58"Then I though Paradise Lost was.
0:10:58 > 0:11:03"Now I know that the Faerie Queene is the dullest thing out, blast it!"
0:11:10 > 0:11:14Larkin took his final examinations in June 1943
0:11:14 > 0:11:17and got his degree at the Sheldonian Theatre,
0:11:17 > 0:11:20witnessed by his proud family.
0:11:20 > 0:11:22He thought he might get a third.
0:11:22 > 0:11:26"I wasn't meant to study but to be studied," he wrote to a friend.
0:11:26 > 0:11:30In fact, he got a first, and was more than pleased with himself.
0:11:30 > 0:11:33"Oh, how clever I am now," he wrote.
0:11:39 > 0:11:43On his 21st birthday, Larkin was on the train to London
0:11:43 > 0:11:47for an interview to join the Civil Service.
0:11:47 > 0:11:51Confessing his real ambition to be a writer,
0:11:51 > 0:11:54not surprisingly, he was rejected.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57He was then turned down for intelligence work at Bletchley Park.
0:12:00 > 0:12:03So, he travelled to Wellington in Shropshire
0:12:03 > 0:12:05to take up a job at the local library,
0:12:05 > 0:12:10admitting that he knew, in his words, "Sweet fuck all about librarianship."
0:12:13 > 0:12:18But, after work, he was writing, now under the influence of WB Yeats.
0:12:18 > 0:12:23These poems, published in his 1945 collection, The North Ship,
0:12:23 > 0:12:28signpost that Larkinland could be an intense, romantic place.
0:12:57 > 0:12:59But his first attempt at being a novelist
0:12:59 > 0:13:01showed a very different side to Larkin.
0:13:03 > 0:13:06Under the pseudonym Brunette Coleman,
0:13:06 > 0:13:10Larkin began to write girls' school stories, with titles like
0:13:10 > 0:13:14Trouble At Willow Gables, and Michaelmas Term At St Brides.
0:13:14 > 0:13:16They were partly to amuse his Oxford friends.
0:13:16 > 0:13:20They were partly a genuine homage to the genre.
0:13:20 > 0:13:23They featured figures such as Mary,
0:13:23 > 0:13:26the much-flogged madcap of the remove,
0:13:26 > 0:13:29and her rather sinister older chum, Hilary,
0:13:29 > 0:13:32who has a passionate lesbian crush on Mary.
0:13:32 > 0:13:34I'll read you this little bit which I find rather moving.
0:13:34 > 0:13:36It's in the dorm one night.
0:13:36 > 0:13:41Mary is fast asleep in her pyjamas. And Hilary has her in her arms.
0:13:43 > 0:13:46"With her free hand, she switched out the light.
0:13:46 > 0:13:48"Mary breathed on placidly,
0:13:48 > 0:13:51"and Hilary's hand wandered eclectically over her body
0:13:51 > 0:13:53"while she kissed her sleeping face.
0:13:53 > 0:13:59"Her hand pulled aside Mary's pyjama so she could kiss her bared shoulder.
0:13:59 > 0:14:02"Encountering a button, she cast away prudence and undid it
0:14:02 > 0:14:05"and then another."
0:14:06 > 0:14:09It's all good, high camp, escapist fantasy
0:14:09 > 0:14:12but with a curiously feminine tone.
0:14:12 > 0:14:14Larkin use to say that Brunette Coleman was
0:14:14 > 0:14:19"the passionately sentimental spinster" who lurked within him.
0:14:23 > 0:14:26In September 1946, Larkin was on the move again
0:14:26 > 0:14:31when he began working at University College, Leicester.
0:14:31 > 0:14:32Now a published poet,
0:14:32 > 0:14:36he also had two, shall we say, more serious-minded novels
0:14:36 > 0:14:40ready for publication, Jill, and A Girl In Winter.
0:14:40 > 0:14:43So, for those attracted to the literary type,
0:14:43 > 0:14:46assistant librarian Larkin was quite a catch.
0:14:48 > 0:14:50The new man in the library was spotted
0:14:50 > 0:14:55by assistant lecturer in English literature Monica Jones,
0:14:55 > 0:14:59whose first observation was, "He looks like a snorer."
0:14:59 > 0:15:02Monica was a popular lecturer here although it must be said
0:15:02 > 0:15:06not everyone appreciated her robust, right-wing opinions
0:15:06 > 0:15:09and her outrageous personality.
0:15:09 > 0:15:12When, many years later, Larkin introduced me to Monica,
0:15:12 > 0:15:13I liked her.
0:15:15 > 0:15:18She was sexily dressed, she was loud,
0:15:18 > 0:15:22her voice was something between a duchess and a pantomime dame.
0:15:22 > 0:15:24She was a blowsy woman.
0:15:24 > 0:15:28Her lips were smeared with scarlet lipstick.
0:15:28 > 0:15:31But, above all, she was fun!
0:15:42 > 0:15:46At first, there was friendship. But then they became lovers.
0:15:51 > 0:15:55In the Bodleian Library in Oxford are the many letters Monica and Larkin
0:15:55 > 0:16:00sent each other during what became a long, long-distance relationship.
0:16:02 > 0:16:04How sentimental they are.
0:16:04 > 0:16:07They had this shared love of Beatrix Potter
0:16:07 > 0:16:09and it fed into their fantasy life.
0:16:09 > 0:16:13He often addressed her as "Dear Bun" or "Dearest Bunny".
0:16:13 > 0:16:15And he did drawings of her as a little rabbit.
0:16:15 > 0:16:18Here she is in the kitchen wearing a frock and doing the cooking.
0:16:18 > 0:16:21He was always drawn... They are very good, these cartoons.
0:16:21 > 0:16:24He was always drawn as the seal, for some reason.
0:16:24 > 0:16:29And the letters are full of the usual Larkinian moaning and groaning.
0:16:29 > 0:16:33Gossip, love of sport, particularly boxing and cricket.
0:16:33 > 0:16:38They also reflect the troubled sexual life the pair had,
0:16:38 > 0:16:40and they are haunted, of course,
0:16:40 > 0:16:43by Larkin's everlasting sense of failure.
0:16:44 > 0:16:48So, importantly, what Monica's letters gave a doubting Larkin
0:16:48 > 0:16:51was support, in particular, for his writing.
0:16:51 > 0:16:55In one, she wrote to him emphatically,
0:16:55 > 0:16:58"It's you who are the one."
0:16:58 > 0:17:00And Larkin took her advice.
0:17:00 > 0:17:03They once visited Chichester Cathedral
0:17:03 > 0:17:07and saw the 14th-century tomb of the Earl and Countess of Arundel,
0:17:07 > 0:17:11their two figures in stone, holding hands.
0:17:11 > 0:17:14The experience inspired one of Larkin's
0:17:14 > 0:17:19most tender meditations on love, its permanence and impermanence,
0:17:19 > 0:17:21An Arundel Tomb.
0:17:22 > 0:17:26And it was Monica who helped him decide on the exact wording
0:17:26 > 0:17:28of the poem's immortal last line.
0:17:30 > 0:17:33Time has transfigured them into Untruth.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be
0:17:39 > 0:17:42Their final blazon, and to prove
0:17:42 > 0:17:46Our almost instinct almost true:
0:17:46 > 0:17:49What will survive of us is love.
0:18:04 > 0:18:06As for mother love,
0:18:06 > 0:18:11when his father, Sydney, died, Larkin felt duty bound to look after Eva.
0:18:11 > 0:18:16For a while, they lived together here, at 12 Dixon Drive in Leicester.
0:18:16 > 0:18:19It was a particularly miserable time for Larkin,
0:18:19 > 0:18:25made guilty by her depression, and furious by their mutual dependence.
0:18:25 > 0:18:28He admitted to Monica that he was trapped in a mother complex.
0:18:28 > 0:18:33She implored him, "Don't be robbed, don't be robbed of your soul."
0:18:35 > 0:18:39When he eventually escaped this claustrophobic household,
0:18:39 > 0:18:43Larkin wrote to the "Dearest Old Creature" twice a week.
0:18:43 > 0:18:48And, throughout Eva's long widowhood, he visited her once a month,
0:18:48 > 0:18:51he took her to the seaside every year
0:18:51 > 0:18:55in visits which were echoes of his childhood holidays.
0:18:55 > 0:18:57His mother became his muse.
0:18:57 > 0:19:01The anger, the resentment, the bitterness against her
0:19:01 > 0:19:04which he expressed in letters to Monica and the other friends
0:19:04 > 0:19:09translated into poems of deep compassion,
0:19:09 > 0:19:13such as Reference Back, Love Songs In Age
0:19:13 > 0:19:17or, a particular favourite of mine, Home Is So Sad.
0:19:28 > 0:19:32After Leicester, Larkin's life in universities continued
0:19:32 > 0:19:35when he moved to Queen's, Belfast.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39Then, in March 1955, he gained promotion,
0:19:39 > 0:19:43becoming head librarian here at the University Of Hull.
0:19:50 > 0:19:55The Brynmor Jones Library is as much Larkin's creation as his poems.
0:19:57 > 0:19:59Built in two phases over 15 years,
0:19:59 > 0:20:03he was deeply involved in every stage of its construction.
0:20:07 > 0:20:12This is Larkin's office, of which he was inordinately proud, boasting that
0:20:12 > 0:20:17his desk was larger than that of the President of the United States.
0:20:17 > 0:20:20And where other people might have a framed photograph
0:20:20 > 0:20:22of the wife and kids on their desk,
0:20:22 > 0:20:25here, he has a picture of Guy The Gorilla
0:20:25 > 0:20:31from Regents Park Zoo, who appears to be quoting Oscar Wilde.
0:20:31 > 0:20:32"Other people are quite dreadful.
0:20:32 > 0:20:35"The only possible society is oneself."
0:20:37 > 0:20:39Larkin liked being a librarian.
0:20:39 > 0:20:41It suited him.
0:20:41 > 0:20:44He used to say he liked the feel of a library.
0:20:44 > 0:20:45And he was very good at it,
0:20:45 > 0:20:49with organisational skills inherited from his father.
0:20:52 > 0:20:58In 1964, the BBC filmed Larkin in the library for the arts series Monitor.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04- VOICE OF PHILIP LARKIN: - Taking it all in all,
0:21:04 > 0:21:07work and I get on fairly well, I think.
0:21:07 > 0:21:12There are just these occasions when one would like to prove it
0:21:12 > 0:21:15by not working for a bit!
0:21:15 > 0:21:18And to feel that you're spending your life
0:21:18 > 0:21:21on the one rather than the other
0:21:21 > 0:21:25is perhaps the most depressing thought that work can bring you.
0:21:25 > 0:21:29When I bind up library committee minutes at the end of five years,
0:21:29 > 0:21:30it makes a great fat volume.
0:21:30 > 0:21:34But it's not the same as a volume of poetry.
0:21:34 > 0:21:38Larkin's ambivalence about work revealed itself in two poems,
0:21:38 > 0:21:41each presided over by the extraordinary, memorable symbol
0:21:41 > 0:21:43of a toad.
0:21:43 > 0:21:44TOAD CHIRPS
0:21:44 > 0:21:47First there was Toads,
0:21:47 > 0:21:50with Larkin playfully resentful.
0:22:11 > 0:22:13TOAD CHIRPS
0:22:13 > 0:22:17Eight years later, he wrote Toads Revisited,
0:22:17 > 0:22:20this time on the consolations of the daily grind.
0:22:22 > 0:22:27No, give me my in-tray, My loaf-haired secretary,
0:22:27 > 0:22:30My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir.
0:22:30 > 0:22:32What else can I answer,
0:22:32 > 0:22:36When the lights come on at four At the end of another year?
0:22:36 > 0:22:42Give me your arm, old toad' Help me down Cemetery Road.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48Paid work was central to Larkin's life
0:22:48 > 0:22:52and he was one of the few poets to write about the experience
0:22:52 > 0:22:56of having a routine job and why it is important to us.
0:22:56 > 0:23:00So, the poems Toads and Toads Revisited
0:23:00 > 0:23:05are much loved because they reflect this daily reality.
0:23:05 > 0:23:07And, to remind himself of their popularity,
0:23:07 > 0:23:11he used to keep this figurine on his desk.
0:23:11 > 0:23:14Incidentally, those of you paying attention will realise
0:23:14 > 0:23:17this is a frog and not a toad.
0:23:19 > 0:23:25Larkin came to live on the top floor of 32 Pearson Park
0:23:25 > 0:23:29where he could gaze out onto park and people opposite.
0:23:42 > 0:23:46Though first impressions were that it was a bit chilly in Hull
0:23:46 > 0:23:47and smelt of fish,
0:23:47 > 0:23:50Larkin came to appreciate and enjoy the city
0:23:50 > 0:23:52and the countryside nearby.
0:24:02 > 0:24:06Hull appealed to him because, if you know what I mean,
0:24:06 > 0:24:09it is the end of the pier.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12It's on the edge of things, it's looking out to the North Sea
0:24:12 > 0:24:16and the isolation was necessary to him.
0:24:16 > 0:24:18He was through and through a provincial man
0:24:18 > 0:24:22and this enabled him to be a poet on his own terms.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26He never wanted to be the poet of some metropolitan literary salon
0:24:26 > 0:24:29and he despised those who did.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34With his trusty Rolleiflex camera,
0:24:34 > 0:24:38he took photograph after photograph of his surroundings.
0:24:42 > 0:24:46And it's that same accurate photographic eye
0:24:46 > 0:24:50that we can see on display in a wonderful poem like Here
0:24:50 > 0:24:52about Hull and beyond.
0:24:52 > 0:24:56It shows, I think, what a truly great poet he was
0:24:56 > 0:24:59of landscape and of place.
0:25:01 > 0:25:03In the Monitor documentary,
0:25:03 > 0:25:07director Patrick Garland added images to Larkin's words.
0:25:07 > 0:25:11Narrating the poem is John Betjeman, the film's presenter
0:25:11 > 0:25:12and a great admirer of Larkin.
0:25:14 > 0:25:19Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
0:25:19 > 0:25:24Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,
0:25:24 > 0:25:29And residents from raw estates, brought down
0:25:29 > 0:25:34The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,
0:25:34 > 0:25:39Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires.
0:25:53 > 0:25:58One of his favourite trips was north, out of Hull,
0:25:58 > 0:26:01to the town of Beverley and the church of St Mary's.
0:26:03 > 0:26:08Larkin loved churches as repositories of the past.
0:26:10 > 0:26:14He adored music inspired by Christian faith.
0:26:14 > 0:26:18But, following the advice of his father, Larkin himself had none.
0:26:34 > 0:26:37I came here with Larkin.
0:26:37 > 0:26:41I think, by then, it was pretty clear that I was religious and he wasn't.
0:26:41 > 0:26:44He obviously didn't have the smallest glimmering of faith,
0:26:44 > 0:26:45not the smallest.
0:26:45 > 0:26:49That didn't stop him, however, enjoying church buildings.
0:26:49 > 0:26:54That experience is what fed into his famous poem, Church Going.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57In that poem, Larkin, the narrator,
0:26:57 > 0:27:01looks at a beautiful church building like this,
0:27:01 > 0:27:03with the eyes of total scepticism.
0:27:03 > 0:27:08But also with such warmth, such empathy, such feeling.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15A serious house on serious earth it is.
0:27:15 > 0:27:19In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
0:27:19 > 0:27:23Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
0:27:23 > 0:27:27And that much never can be obsolete,
0:27:27 > 0:27:30Since someone will forever be surprising
0:27:30 > 0:27:34A hunger in himself to be more serious,
0:27:34 > 0:27:37And gravitating with it to this ground,
0:27:37 > 0:27:42Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
0:27:42 > 0:27:45If only that so many dead lie round.
0:27:50 > 0:27:54Now, because a poem like Church Going has something melancholic about it,
0:27:54 > 0:27:59you might conclude that Larkinland wasn't a place to be enjoyed.
0:27:59 > 0:28:00But you'd be wrong.
0:28:05 > 0:28:10Ye Old Blacke Boy is one of the many pubs that Larkin liked to drink in,
0:28:10 > 0:28:13happily nattering to friends and strangers alike.
0:28:13 > 0:28:16Here, he once gave a talk
0:28:16 > 0:28:20about one of the other great pleasures in his life, jazz.
0:28:20 > 0:28:24This rather nice old record player is actually
0:28:24 > 0:28:28identical to the one Larkin himself had, his old Black Box.
0:28:28 > 0:28:31And I'm going to play one of his very own records.
0:28:40 > 0:28:44MUSIC: Shake It And Break It, by Sidney Bechet
0:28:47 > 0:28:50He called himself "a jazz addict",
0:28:50 > 0:28:53believing that, "man can live a week without bread
0:28:53 > 0:28:55"but not a day without the righteous jazz."
0:28:57 > 0:29:00JAZZ CLARINET CONTINUES
0:29:04 > 0:29:09For Larkin, there was such emotion in the music, such feeling.
0:29:09 > 0:29:12But there was one thing that really got to him,
0:29:12 > 0:29:16really transported him, and that was the rhythms of jazz.
0:29:22 > 0:29:26A friend of Larkin's remembers him in his flat,
0:29:26 > 0:29:30dancing around with joy, music blaring from the record player.
0:29:30 > 0:29:33In one hand, a hug G and T, while the other hand mimicked
0:29:33 > 0:29:36the movement of the drumstick hammering out the beat.
0:29:36 > 0:29:38DOUBLE BASS PLAYS
0:29:40 > 0:29:45In February 1961, Larkin began a monthly column about jazz
0:29:45 > 0:29:50for the Daily Telegraph, and he made his opinions very clear indeed.
0:29:50 > 0:29:55He railed against contemporary greats like Miles Davis and John Coltrane,
0:29:55 > 0:29:58whose art was, in his delicious phrase,
0:29:58 > 0:30:01"not the music of happy men".
0:30:02 > 0:30:05What he disliked about modernism in jazz
0:30:05 > 0:30:09was what he disliked about modernism in general.
0:30:09 > 0:30:12Too clever by half, sterile, obscure.
0:30:12 > 0:30:17He talked about a calculated perversity, ugly on purpose.
0:30:17 > 0:30:22Larkin valued the simple, lyrical and melodious in poetry.
0:30:22 > 0:30:25So his jazz heroes had these qualities too.
0:30:25 > 0:30:29For this reason, he considered Sidney Bechet, the New Orleans virtuoso,
0:30:29 > 0:30:31a true artist.
0:30:32 > 0:30:35So, Larkin wrote him a fan letter, in verse.
0:30:37 > 0:30:41That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
0:30:41 > 0:30:44Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
0:30:44 > 0:30:48And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,
0:30:48 > 0:30:51Building for some a legendary Quarter
0:30:51 > 0:30:54Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles,
0:30:54 > 0:30:57Everyone making love and going shares -
0:30:57 > 0:30:59Oh, play that thing!
0:31:09 > 0:31:12By the time Larkin arrived at the University Library in Hull,
0:31:12 > 0:31:15he had given up being a novelist, explaining that
0:31:15 > 0:31:20"When I lapsed back into poetry, it was so much easier, so much quicker."
0:31:20 > 0:31:24Poetry could be something done for a couple of hours a night
0:31:24 > 0:31:26over a drink or two after the toad work.
0:31:26 > 0:31:30And why and how Larkin wrote poetry can be discovered
0:31:30 > 0:31:33in Hull's History Centre.
0:31:33 > 0:31:36A clue can be found in the second of eight notebooks
0:31:36 > 0:31:38and a picture of Thomas Hardy.
0:31:41 > 0:31:44After first Auden then Yeats,
0:31:44 > 0:31:48the great poetic mentor and hero for Larkin was Thomas Hardy.
0:31:48 > 0:31:52It was under Hardy's influence that he found his own voice.
0:31:52 > 0:31:54Hardy taught him simplicity of language.
0:31:54 > 0:31:59He also taught him that he could use his own experience of life,
0:31:59 > 0:32:03of misery, of love, as a subject for his own poetry.
0:32:03 > 0:32:09Here, we find in the notebook, under a photo of Hardy, this quotation.
0:32:11 > 0:32:14"The ultimate aim of a poet should be to touch our hearts
0:32:14 > 0:32:19"by showing his own, and not exhibit his learning, or his fine tastes
0:32:19 > 0:32:23"or his skill in mimicking the notes of his predecessors."
0:32:25 > 0:32:29Looking at these notebooks in which Larkin kept over 35 years of writing,
0:32:29 > 0:32:33you get an extraordinary insight into his working methods.
0:32:36 > 0:32:37Writing in pencil the different drafts,
0:32:37 > 0:32:40with notes in the margins and revealing doodles,
0:32:40 > 0:32:44each version of the poem is precisely dated
0:32:44 > 0:32:48so we can know what events and experiences have inspired them.
0:32:50 > 0:32:53I want to look in detail at the writing
0:32:53 > 0:32:57of one of his most celebrated poems, The Whitsun Weddings,
0:32:57 > 0:33:01which is to be found here in notebook number four.
0:33:01 > 0:33:05The origin of the poem was a railway journey he made
0:33:05 > 0:33:07in a hot summer, in 1955.
0:33:19 > 0:33:22That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
0:33:22 > 0:33:26Not till about One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
0:33:26 > 0:33:29Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
0:33:29 > 0:33:34All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
0:33:34 > 0:33:36Of being in a hurry gone.
0:33:43 > 0:33:47As the train stopped at various stations along the line,
0:33:47 > 0:33:49he passed all these wedding parties.
0:33:51 > 0:33:54What Larkin had seen were family and friends
0:33:54 > 0:33:56sending off honeymooners to London.
0:34:00 > 0:34:01All down the line
0:34:01 > 0:34:06Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round
0:34:06 > 0:34:09The last confetti and advice were thrown
0:34:09 > 0:34:13And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
0:34:13 > 0:34:17Just what it saw departing: children frowned
0:34:17 > 0:34:20At something dull; fathers had never known
0:34:20 > 0:34:24Success so huge and wholly farcical;
0:34:24 > 0:34:28The women shared The secret like a happy funeral.
0:34:28 > 0:34:33While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
0:34:33 > 0:34:34At a religious wounding.
0:34:40 > 0:34:42And it made a great impression on him.
0:34:42 > 0:34:45But he didn't turn it into a poem all at once.
0:34:45 > 0:34:48You see here, because he dated the poems in the notebook,
0:34:48 > 0:34:52it wasn't until May 1957,
0:34:52 > 0:34:55nearly two years later, that the poem begins,
0:34:55 > 0:34:59and he immortalises that railway journey.
0:34:59 > 0:35:01It began as a journey in July.
0:35:01 > 0:35:05But he changes it immediately into a Whitsun journey earlier in the year.
0:35:05 > 0:35:09And you can see how hard he's working,
0:35:09 > 0:35:13crossing out, changing things, even in this early draft.
0:35:13 > 0:35:18He then, very interestingly, puts it on one side for nearly a year.
0:35:18 > 0:35:22And you turn a few pages of the notebook,
0:35:22 > 0:35:27and you come here to 16 March 1958.
0:35:27 > 0:35:33And here, you watch him, once again, forming this great work of art.
0:35:33 > 0:35:37Altogether, it's three years from the moment on the railway platform
0:35:37 > 0:35:40to the finished poem that we now know.
0:35:47 > 0:35:51They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
0:35:51 > 0:35:55- An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
0:35:55 > 0:35:58And someone running up to bowl - and none
0:35:58 > 0:36:00Thought of the others they would never meet
0:36:00 > 0:36:04Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
0:36:13 > 0:36:16It's Larkin at his absolute best, I think.
0:36:16 > 0:36:20Here you see him observant, but compassionately observant.
0:36:20 > 0:36:24Lyrical, imaginative, optimistic,
0:36:24 > 0:36:28moving to this great transcendent climax at the end.
0:36:35 > 0:36:39But there is bitter sweetness, perhaps even poignancy,
0:36:39 > 0:36:41in this evocation of newlyweds,
0:36:41 > 0:36:44if we understand Larkin's own dogged bachelorhood
0:36:44 > 0:36:47and the growing complications of his love life.
0:36:49 > 0:36:52By the early 1960s,
0:36:52 > 0:36:55the relationship with Monica had developed a fairly set pattern.
0:36:55 > 0:37:01She in Leicester, he in his flat here in Pearson Park,
0:37:01 > 0:37:04with his books and his records and his solitude.
0:37:05 > 0:37:07Monica wanted to marry.
0:37:07 > 0:37:10But Larkin lived life on his own terms.
0:37:10 > 0:37:15And what went with marriage was to be avoided at all costs.
0:37:16 > 0:37:19Of course, Monica was very unhappy, but she'd come to recognise
0:37:19 > 0:37:24what she defined as his "iron selfishness".
0:37:24 > 0:37:28And yet, the long-term relationship continued.
0:37:39 > 0:37:41Every year, they went away together,
0:37:41 > 0:37:45even though Larkin once bizarrely dismissed holidays as
0:37:45 > 0:37:47a "wholly feminine conception".
0:37:50 > 0:37:53But they never went abroad.
0:37:53 > 0:37:56Germany, as a teenager, had put him off all that for life.
0:37:58 > 0:38:02However, in autumn of 1960, things became messy.
0:38:03 > 0:38:06Larkin had begun to fall for a work colleague at the library,
0:38:06 > 0:38:08Maeve Brennan.
0:38:08 > 0:38:10She was different from Monica.
0:38:10 > 0:38:12From Maeve, there was no bawdiness, sharp tongue
0:38:12 > 0:38:16or loud views on literature, life and politics.
0:38:16 > 0:38:19She was quieter, less abrasive,
0:38:19 > 0:38:23and satisfied the romantic side to Larkin that Monica never could.
0:38:23 > 0:38:27And, of course, there is irony that the devoutly Catholic Maeve
0:38:27 > 0:38:32now became the faithless Larkin's new muse, the latest face.
0:38:39 > 0:38:43And new love made new poetry.
0:38:43 > 0:38:45One evening, Maeve attended a performance of
0:38:45 > 0:38:50Elgar's Introduction And Allegro For Strings here at Hull's City Hall.
0:38:55 > 0:38:59Larkin was at home in Pearson Park,
0:38:59 > 0:39:02listening to it transmitted live on the radio.
0:39:06 > 0:39:11This physical separation yet emotional closeness through the music
0:39:11 > 0:39:14inspired a love poem, Broadcast.
0:39:16 > 0:39:20I think of your face among all those faces,
0:39:20 > 0:39:26Beautiful and devout before Cascades of monumental slithering,
0:39:26 > 0:39:28One of your gloves unnoticed on the floor
0:39:28 > 0:39:32Beside those new, slightly-outmoded shoes.
0:39:39 > 0:39:43When the poem Broadcast was first published in the Listener magazine,
0:39:43 > 0:39:46making his feelings so clear about Maeve,
0:39:46 > 0:39:48Monica, obviously, was hurt.
0:39:48 > 0:39:51She was very much upset, she sank into a depression.
0:39:51 > 0:39:53Of course, she'd known about Maeve.
0:39:53 > 0:39:55Larkin could hardly keep Maeve a secret.
0:39:55 > 0:40:00But it was now clear Maeve was a rival for his affections
0:40:00 > 0:40:04and Monica naturally wanted to know who was his real partner
0:40:04 > 0:40:08in what had now become a painful love triangle.
0:40:10 > 0:40:13Letters in the Bodleian Library between Larkin and Monica
0:40:13 > 0:40:17from this period are full of anger and sarcasm from her,
0:40:17 > 0:40:20self-justification and self-reproach from him.
0:40:22 > 0:40:26These letters show Larkin in the midst of an eternal triangle
0:40:26 > 0:40:29torn between Maeve and Monica.
0:40:29 > 0:40:34A period, as Monica called it, when he was pretending to give up Maeve.
0:40:34 > 0:40:39She writes comments in the margins of his letters. Here he writes -
0:40:39 > 0:40:44"Dearest Bun, dear, don't please be miserable over this Maeve business.
0:40:44 > 0:40:46"You've been extremely tolerant all the time.
0:40:46 > 0:40:49"And I should be glad to have your sympathy.
0:40:49 > 0:40:52"But I think we both feel this is the best thing, at present."
0:40:52 > 0:40:55"For five minutes," puts Monica.
0:40:55 > 0:40:58Here, over the page, "Both of you had my sympathy.
0:40:58 > 0:41:00"What a good giggle for both of you.
0:41:00 > 0:41:04"I was terribly upset for both of you while you were giggling together."
0:41:04 > 0:41:09So, you see Larkin unable to commit to one woman
0:41:09 > 0:41:12and leading another woman into exactly the same position.
0:41:12 > 0:41:17Any woman would find this upsetting, and absolutely bloody.
0:41:28 > 0:41:31A Larkin selfishly self-absorbed,
0:41:31 > 0:41:36a Larkin yearning and vulnerable, this was the divided soul of the poet
0:41:36 > 0:41:41entering what he called the silent shadowland of middle age.
0:41:41 > 0:41:43And now, as Larkin looked in the mirror,
0:41:43 > 0:41:46he increasingly disliked what he saw.
0:41:48 > 0:41:51Now there comes a definite darkening in his writing
0:41:51 > 0:41:56to something more acerbic, nearer the knuckle, and calculatingly shocking.
0:41:59 > 0:42:03Here is the notebook with the drafts of Annus Mirabilis
0:42:03 > 0:42:08with its famous first stanza so full of wit and sarcasm.
0:42:08 > 0:42:12I see it was written in June 1967, the Summer Of Love,
0:42:12 > 0:42:16so, peace and love, Philip! Here it is.
0:42:16 > 0:42:18"Sexual intercourse began
0:42:18 > 0:42:22"In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) -
0:42:22 > 0:42:25"Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
0:42:25 > 0:42:27"And the Beatles' first LP."
0:42:30 > 0:42:36Another in this vein is the poem High Windows, again finished in 1967.
0:42:36 > 0:42:38Larkin looks out from his flat
0:42:38 > 0:42:41and sees a teenage couple in the park opposite
0:42:41 > 0:42:46and muses on the sexual revolution seemingly passing him by.
0:42:50 > 0:42:53The first stanza is crude, almost shocking.
0:42:53 > 0:42:57"When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's
0:42:57 > 0:43:02"Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise
0:43:02 > 0:43:05"Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives."
0:43:05 > 0:43:10And yet, the poem moves towards a dreamy, escapist climax.
0:43:10 > 0:43:12"And immediately
0:43:12 > 0:43:17"Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
0:43:17 > 0:43:20"The sun-comprehending glass,
0:43:20 > 0:43:24"And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
0:43:24 > 0:43:29"Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless."
0:43:32 > 0:43:34It almost seems to me that there are two Larkins,
0:43:34 > 0:43:36and you see them in this poem.
0:43:36 > 0:43:39There's the rather laddish, blokeish Larkin
0:43:39 > 0:43:41who'd like the company of his male friends
0:43:41 > 0:43:43and liked shocking them with letters with rude language.
0:43:43 > 0:43:47And there's a much more feminine, vulnerable Larkin
0:43:47 > 0:43:51who creates this music at the end of his poem.
0:44:00 > 0:44:03With middle age, Larkin became ever more despondent
0:44:03 > 0:44:06to the point of self-caricature.
0:44:06 > 0:44:10"What an absurd, empty life, and the grave yawns,"
0:44:10 > 0:44:12he once wrote to a friend at this time.
0:44:15 > 0:44:17Mortality had always been a preoccupation
0:44:17 > 0:44:20and there were real places in Larkinland
0:44:20 > 0:44:22that made him brood on the subject.
0:44:23 > 0:44:27One was the Hull Royal Infirmary, where he had gone for X-rays
0:44:27 > 0:44:30to help diagnose a worrying neck condition.
0:44:30 > 0:44:32Larkin came away shaken.
0:44:34 > 0:44:38The experience inspired him to write a poem called The Building,
0:44:38 > 0:44:43a powerful but bleak meditation on sickness and where that might lead.
0:44:48 > 0:44:51With sickness comes ageing.
0:44:51 > 0:44:56And, about this, Larkin was unflinchingly brutal.
0:44:57 > 0:45:01In the early 1970s, Eva, his mother, became increasingly frail.
0:45:01 > 0:45:02She was often in hospital.
0:45:02 > 0:45:05Then she developed dementia and had to be taken into a care home
0:45:05 > 0:45:08where he was a frequent visitor.
0:45:08 > 0:45:11Faced with all this, Larkin sat down
0:45:11 > 0:45:17and penned that savage but hauntingly honest poem, The Old Fools.
0:45:22 > 0:45:25What do they think has happened, the old fools,
0:45:25 > 0:45:27To make them like this?
0:45:27 > 0:45:29Do they somehow suppose
0:45:29 > 0:45:32It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
0:45:32 > 0:45:36And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
0:45:36 > 0:45:38Who called this morning?
0:45:38 > 0:45:40Or that, if they only chose,
0:45:40 > 0:45:44They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
0:45:44 > 0:45:47Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
0:45:48 > 0:45:51Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
0:45:51 > 0:45:55And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
0:45:55 > 0:45:59Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
0:45:59 > 0:46:01Watching the light move?
0:46:01 > 0:46:05If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
0:46:05 > 0:46:08Why aren't they screaming?
0:46:08 > 0:46:13# When I woke up this mornin' my sweet man couldn't be found
0:46:13 > 0:46:17# I'm going down to the river
0:46:18 > 0:46:22# Into it I'm goin' to jump... #
0:46:22 > 0:46:28Though he would never admit it, Larkin at 50, in 1972, was a success.
0:46:31 > 0:46:36The provincial poet librarian was now feted by the Establishment.
0:46:37 > 0:46:40He had a visiting fellowship here at All Souls in Oxford.
0:46:42 > 0:46:45Honorary doctorates and literary awards.
0:46:47 > 0:46:51Larkin posed for his portrait, this by the photographer Fay Godwin,
0:46:51 > 0:46:53which, nevertheless, he grumbled,
0:46:53 > 0:46:55made him look like the Boston Strangler.
0:46:55 > 0:46:58On Desert Island Discs,
0:46:58 > 0:47:01his one of eight records had to be
0:47:01 > 0:47:04Bessie Smith's I'm Down In The Dumps,
0:47:04 > 0:47:08so full of life, he advised, and Dr Larkin meant it.
0:47:11 > 0:47:12# I'm ready to jump
0:47:15 > 0:47:21# I need a whole lot of loving
0:47:21 > 0:47:25# 'Cause I'm down in the dumps. #
0:47:26 > 0:47:31But, in private, you would find a rather less cuddly Philip Larkin.
0:47:32 > 0:47:35Egged on by the true blue Monica Jones,
0:47:35 > 0:47:38an uglier side to Larkin emerged.
0:47:38 > 0:47:41He and Monica wrote a lyric, and he was obviously very proud of it
0:47:41 > 0:47:43because, in his letters,
0:47:43 > 0:47:45we find he's sent it to quite a number of his chums.
0:47:45 > 0:47:49Here it is in a letter to a school friend called Colin Gunner.
0:47:49 > 0:47:52"Yes, I quite agree about life being better under the Conservatives.
0:47:52 > 0:47:55"Let's try Enoch for a bit, I say.
0:47:55 > 0:47:57"Prison for strikers,
0:47:57 > 0:47:58"Bring back the cat,
0:47:58 > 0:48:01"Kick out the niggers - How about that?"
0:48:01 > 0:48:05"Ooh, Larkin, I'm sorry to hear you holding these views."
0:48:06 > 0:48:13Do I find myself, in my 60s, more tolerant of this low racism here?
0:48:13 > 0:48:16No, actually, I find myself less tolerant.
0:48:16 > 0:48:18Larkin once wrote,
0:48:18 > 0:48:22"It's the job of poetry to make the beautiful seem true,
0:48:22 > 0:48:24"and the true beautiful."
0:48:25 > 0:48:29What he wrote about race is neither true nor beautiful.
0:48:32 > 0:48:36Confronted with this saloon bar Larkin, many questions arise.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39For example, could the same man who loved Sidney Bechet
0:48:39 > 0:48:44and the other black maestros really be such a Little Englander?
0:48:44 > 0:48:49And, how could the plaintive voice that captured our innermost feelings
0:48:49 > 0:48:51seem so downright nasty?
0:48:51 > 0:48:54But, yes, they were the same man.
0:48:55 > 0:48:58As his views coarsened,
0:48:58 > 0:49:02his love life became ever more complicated and fraught.
0:49:03 > 0:49:06Maeve Brennan, some time in 1974,
0:49:06 > 0:49:11a strong Catholic who strongly disapproved of sex before marriage,
0:49:11 > 0:49:14in her own words, yielded to temptation with Larkin.
0:49:14 > 0:49:20At the same time, he began an affair with his secretary, Betty Mackereth.
0:49:20 > 0:49:23With his usual mordant humour, he could see there was something
0:49:23 > 0:49:26ludicrous and middle-aged about sleeping with your secretary,
0:49:26 > 0:49:29particularly after such a long time.
0:49:38 > 0:49:42In November 1977, Larkin's mother died.
0:49:42 > 0:49:45Wearily, he remarked that maybe he was next for the chop.
0:49:48 > 0:49:51By now, the writing had virtually dried up.
0:49:51 > 0:49:53But, in the final notebook,
0:49:53 > 0:49:58he finished one final masterpiece, Aubade.
0:49:58 > 0:50:02Here, Larkin looks at himself one last time in verse
0:50:02 > 0:50:06just as he did in his last photographic self-portrait.
0:50:06 > 0:50:08It's a harrowing self-elegy.
0:50:47 > 0:50:49Perhaps you wouldn't be surprised to know
0:50:49 > 0:50:54that a favourite haunt of Larkin's in Hull was the Springbank Cemetery,
0:50:54 > 0:50:58a tranquil but sombre spot that he was drawn to photograph.
0:51:01 > 0:51:04I can't think of a more appropriate place in Larkinland
0:51:04 > 0:51:08to contemplate life, death and the poet.
0:51:10 > 0:51:13Much of his work is a relentless reminder
0:51:13 > 0:51:17that we are all going to become the "old fools",
0:51:17 > 0:51:22that we're all walking down Cemetery Road, that we're all going to die.
0:51:22 > 0:51:27He's an Eeyorish, secular equivalent of the old Medieval hermit
0:51:27 > 0:51:31with his scythe and his hour-glass, reminding us of mortality.
0:51:31 > 0:51:35That, funnily enough, is one of the reasons he's such a popular writer.
0:51:35 > 0:51:40There are many, many people in this world who believe that, when you die,
0:51:40 > 0:51:43that's it. This life is all there is.
0:51:43 > 0:51:47Work is a drug that can make you forget it some of the time.
0:51:47 > 0:51:50Much of the time, you can't forget it.
0:51:50 > 0:51:54And even people like myself who retain religious belief
0:51:54 > 0:51:59must ask ourselves sometimes, what if Larkin wasn't right?
0:52:00 > 0:52:06He's the most articulate, memorable poet of materialist atheism.
0:52:13 > 0:52:18The last decade of his life was spent at 105 Newland Park
0:52:18 > 0:52:21when Larkin left the contentment of his rented flat
0:52:21 > 0:52:26and begrudgingly experienced home ownership for the first time.
0:52:26 > 0:52:31I came up to Hull in 1984, and interviewed him here for Radio Four.
0:52:31 > 0:52:34RADIO: 'Are you writing poems at the moment?
0:52:34 > 0:52:37'Well, I haven't given poetry up.
0:52:37 > 0:52:42'But I rather think poetry has given me up which is a great sorrow to me.
0:52:42 > 0:52:45'But not an enormous crushing sorrow.
0:52:45 > 0:52:48'It's a bit like going bald, you can't do anything about it.'
0:52:50 > 0:52:54But, privately, Larkin showed me another state of mind.
0:52:55 > 0:52:58Another time I remember during a very drunken evening,
0:52:58 > 0:53:01he moaned at me, "You don't know what's it's like,
0:53:01 > 0:53:05"what it's like to be fat, you don't know what it's like to be deaf.
0:53:05 > 0:53:08"You don't know what it's like not to be able to write any more."
0:53:08 > 0:53:12I had to reply rather feebly, "I'm afraid I don't know what it's like."
0:53:12 > 0:53:15But then he said, "On top of all that, Monica's so ill,
0:53:15 > 0:53:18"she wants to come and live here, and I've got to look after her."
0:53:18 > 0:53:21I didn't really get the hang of what he was saying.
0:53:21 > 0:53:24I said, "I'm so sorry, Philip."
0:53:24 > 0:53:28He looked at me with a little smile, I'll never forget it. And said,
0:53:28 > 0:53:30"I don't think you really understand.
0:53:30 > 0:53:34"You see, we both want it. We're both so lonely."
0:53:37 > 0:53:42In March 1985, Larkin checked into the Hull Royal Infirmary,
0:53:42 > 0:53:47the building he feared, for an internal investigation.
0:53:47 > 0:53:50He was found to have a tumour in his oesophagus.
0:53:50 > 0:53:52After it was removed,
0:53:52 > 0:53:55another, inoperable this time, was found in his throat.
0:53:55 > 0:54:01Monica decided he shouldn't be told that his condition was now terminal.
0:54:03 > 0:54:06One morning, Larkin woke up in hospital
0:54:06 > 0:54:09and saw the Roman Catholic chaplain from the university
0:54:09 > 0:54:11sitting beside his bed.
0:54:11 > 0:54:15Sent by Maeve, presumably hoping for a death-bed conversion.
0:54:16 > 0:54:21When he saw this well-meaning cleric, the poet said, "Oh, fuck."
0:54:27 > 0:54:31When Larkin died, his apparent last words were,
0:54:31 > 0:54:33"I am going to the inevitable."
0:54:33 > 0:54:35He was 63.
0:54:39 > 0:54:44I remember coming to his funeral here at St Mary The Virgin, Cottingham.
0:54:44 > 0:54:48I looked round for Monica but she wasn't here,
0:54:48 > 0:54:50too grief stricken to attend.
0:54:54 > 0:54:57It was an absolutely traditional Church Of England funeral service
0:54:57 > 0:55:00with Larkin's favourite hymns sung.
0:55:00 > 0:55:03But the high point, undoubtedly,
0:55:03 > 0:55:08was when his lifelong friend Kingsley Amis stood in the pulpit behind me,
0:55:08 > 0:55:11very red in the face, close to tears,
0:55:11 > 0:55:15and encapsulated what is so important about Larkin
0:55:15 > 0:55:18for all of us who love his poetry.
0:55:18 > 0:55:21He said, "He never showed off,
0:55:21 > 0:55:25"he never pretended to feelings that he didn't feel."
0:55:25 > 0:55:28And it was this honesty,
0:55:28 > 0:55:31more total in his case than in any other I've ever known,
0:55:31 > 0:55:36which gave his poetry such power. He meant every word of it.
0:55:40 > 0:55:43In the nearby cemetery, Larkin is buried.
0:55:43 > 0:55:46Monica chose a plain white headstone.
0:55:47 > 0:55:51She died in 2001 and is buried close by.
0:55:53 > 0:55:55Close by, too, is Maeve,
0:55:55 > 0:55:59who, on the gravestone shared with her last lover,
0:55:59 > 0:56:04has the line from An Arundel Tomb that Larkin once shared with Monica.
0:56:06 > 0:56:09"What will survive of us is love."
0:56:22 > 0:56:25But it seems that, 30 years after his death,
0:56:25 > 0:56:28there will be one final honour to be seen
0:56:28 > 0:56:31in the godly splendour of Westminster Abbey.
0:56:33 > 0:56:36I like to think Larkin would have been both pleased and amused
0:56:36 > 0:56:38by the setting.
0:56:39 > 0:56:41Here in Poet's Corner
0:56:41 > 0:56:46are memorial stones to his great mentors Hardy and Auden.
0:56:48 > 0:56:51And here in this Parnassus of stone and marble,
0:56:51 > 0:56:55a similar tribute to Philip Larkin will soon be unveiled.
0:56:55 > 0:56:59I know that it is more than justified.
0:57:00 > 0:57:04Why? Because he had painted so accurately
0:57:04 > 0:57:08life in Britain between the 1950s and 1970s.
0:57:08 > 0:57:11He wasn't a modernist, but he was modern.
0:57:11 > 0:57:14More than any other British writer of that date, I should say,
0:57:14 > 0:57:19he spoke of the human condition, he spoke of our needs for work,
0:57:19 > 0:57:23for love, for sex, and the mess we make of those needs.
0:57:23 > 0:57:26Above all, he spoke of our dread of death.
0:57:26 > 0:57:33So, 30 years on, I ask myself, what will survive of Philip Larkin?
0:57:33 > 0:57:36And I have no doubts what will survive.
0:57:36 > 0:57:39Not his faults, but his poems.
0:57:50 > 0:57:54So, leaving Larkinland, let's hear it one more time,
0:57:54 > 0:57:56with Philip Larkin on words
0:57:56 > 0:57:59accompanied by Sidney Bechet on clarinet.
0:57:59 > 0:58:01CLARINET PLAYS IN BACKGROUND
0:58:01 > 0:58:07What are days for? Days are where we live.
0:58:07 > 0:58:11They come, they wake us Time and time over.
0:58:11 > 0:58:13They are to be happy in:
0:58:13 > 0:58:15Where can we live but days?
0:58:17 > 0:58:22Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor
0:58:22 > 0:58:27In their long coats Running over the fields.