About Larkin
Philip Larkin was born in 1922 and died on the 2nd of September, 1985. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of the latter half of the twentieth century.
His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947), but he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974) (Wikipedia, 2011).
I studied Philip Larkin during my A-Level in English Literature and found myself intrigued by his dark and skeptical outlook on life. His poems are mostly pessimistic in nature and often feature an undercurrent of irony. I have chosen three of his most famous poems to showcase on this website.