Winifred Arnott was a young colleague of Larkin at Queen's University, Belfast (QUB). They became close friends but she soon became engaged to her boyfriend and withdrew from the friendship to a degree. Larkin wrote the poem "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album" about her, and also "Maiden Name". Both appeared in Larkin's 1955 collection The Less Deceived. [1] Patsy Murphy [ edit ] The most extraordinary letters are ones where he is listening to a record or the radio ( The Messiah, for instance, or The Critics) and transmutes the experience even before it has finished. In March 1958 he riffs lovingly on Handel's Solomon as if the characters were all rabbits. At times like this his letters take on the shapely frenzy of the jazz he so loved. It's like the automatic writing at a séance or surrealist soirée, expressive but absolutely untethered, coming very close to that unimaginable thing, a disinhibited Larkin. Never mind that he was relying on the faux spontaneity of drink. It was probably the only kind he trusted. Eva Larkin was Philip Larkin's mother. Born in 1886, she lived until 1977, dying 29 years after her domineering husband, Sydney Larkin. Larkin is often considered to have had a tense relationship with his parents; mainly due to his famous lyric poem "This Be The Verse" beginning with the line "They f*** you up, your mum and dad". However, mother and son wrote to each other twice weekly for about 35 years from 1940, when Larkin went to Oxford University. The writer Philip Pullen has described these letters as "very significant" and proof that "the relationship was deeper and more valuable to Larkin than anybody might have thought". [6] a b c Brennan, Maeve (April 2000). "Larkin with Women: An Inside View" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 February 2014. Throughout the life of the poet Philip Larkin, multiple women had important roles which were significant influences on his poetry. Since Larkin's death in 1985, biographers have highlighted the importance of female relationships on Larkin: when Andrew Motion's biography was serialised in The Independent in 1993, the second installment of extracts was dedicated to the topic. [1] In 1999, Ben Brown's play Larkin with Women dramatised Larkin's relationships with three of his lovers, [2] and more recently writers such as Martin Amis, continued to comment on this subject. [3]

Patsy Strang discovered and read some of Larkin's sexual diaries. [21] She later married the poet Richard Murphy. [22] Maeve Brennan [ edit ]John Banville. "Homage to Philip Larkin by John Banville | The New York Review of Books". nybooks.com . Retrieved 9 August 2012. a b c Hartley, Jean (19 June 2003). "Obituary: Maeve Brennan". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 5 February 2020.

The Larkin-Amis correspondence and the Larkin-Jones have complementary leitmotifs. Most letters to Amis end ritually with "bum", most letters to Monica Jones begin with "bun". Larkin and Jones had a cult of the fluffy rodent, in a running joke that acquired its own seriousness. He wrote in September 1959: "I do deeply feel 'somehow' there is a rabbit there too, doing the things you do; even lecturing on Hopkins. It is a strange fancy. I can't explain it. I think perhaps the rabbit takes your place at times… Of course I know it doesn't really! but I feel loth to say 'there is no rabbit'." They liked Beatrix Potter even when she strayed beyond bunnies, with Larkin declaring that he would sacrifice Joyce, Proust and Mann (foreigners all, admittedly, and he had become scrupulously xenophobic) for The Tailor of Gloucester. This is a stirring book, despite the absence of uplift, because these were people who lived in their letters. Larkin refers to what he is doing in his letters as "talking to you", rather than writing. The one-way medium, not immediately reflexive, seems to liberate him. Interactivity doesn't suit everyone.

Brennan was a colleague of Larkin's at Hull University, from which she graduated with a degree in history, French and English. They first met in 1955 when he moved from Belfast to Hull, but it was in 1960, when Larkin coached her for a Library Association exam, that their relationship became meaningful and romantic. This happened despite Larkin's deep and by then long-standing relationship with Monica Jones. The romance between the two lasted for eighteen years, while their friendship as a whole spanned nearly three decades. [2] Larkin's longest poem, "The Dance" is about an evening spent with Brennan. "The Dance" remains unfinished. The poem "Broadcast" was also written about her. [1] "Broadcast" sees Larkin listening to a live transmission of a concert from Hull's City Hall where Brennan was seated in the audience. Much of Larkin's writing was heavily influenced by his relationship with Brennan, including his collection The Whitsun Weddings, which he once described as Brennan's book. [24] He might be a bad bargain, but the relationship with Monica was stable as long as she had the exclusivity on it. Unfortunately there was evidence (letters received while on holiday with her, for instance) that he was being inadequate with other women. For Philip Larkin to display a talent for sexual intrigue would be roughly as surprising as someone getting work as a juggler without being able to tie his shoelaces. When Monica was deeply upset, he played his top trump in this game of misère: "I've always tried to get you to see me as unlikeable, and now I must be getting near success." There is evidence that Jones gave Larkin editorial advice on his writing. A copy of Jill he inscribed to her to thank her for making it "decent, ie literate"'. Anna Farthing, a curator of a 2017 exhibition in Hull, told The Guardian: "All the evidence suggests he sends her drafts of his work, he’s constantly asking for her opinion." [15] Jones taught at Leicester University from 1946 until 1981 when she retired. She never published anything during her academic career; she "regarded publishing as a bit showy", though she was noted for "the panache of her lecturing, in which, for example, she would wear a Scottish tartan when talking about Macbeth." [12] Her literary enthusiasms (not entirely shared by Larkin) included Walter Scott, Jane Austen and George Crabbe. They shared enthusiasm for Thomas Hardy and Barbara Pym, and swapped scornful opinions of C. P. Snow, Pamela Hansford Johnson, William Cooper and others. [14] They shared a sympathy with animals: both of them deplored vivisection and myxomatosis, were fond of Beatrix Potter's creations, and of real creatures, in particular cats and rabbits, though Monica Jones had a fear of hens, and of some other birds. Larkin's letters to Jones were sometimes "embellished with [his] skilful sketches", Jones as a rabbit ("Dearest bun"), himself as a seal.