In our latest podcast Philip Pullen (Larkin researcher and chair of Larkin100) and Rachael Galletly (PLS Trustee) join us to discuss Larkin poems that are either about or are directly addressed to specific people in his life; Eva Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Winifred Arnott. We also find out about Larkin’s attitude to summer, his favourite poetic phrase, Kingsley Amis’s wilder moments, what book Rachael nicked from a library, and who made Philip Larkin ‘yowl’.

Mother, Summer, I, Heads in the Women’s Ward, Reference Back, Hospital Visits, Love Songs in Age, Letter to a Friend About Girls, The Old Fools, Livings, Lines on a Young Ladies Photograph Album, Deceptions, Born Yesterday, Wild Oats, A Study in Reading Habits, Home is So Sad, The Mower, Maiden Name, Afternoons, Show Saturday, An Arundel Tomb, Broadcast, Poem about Oxford, Talking in Bed.

Letters Home (ed. James Booth, Faber and Faber, 2018)

Inside Story by Martin Amis (Jonathan Cape, 2020)

The Letters of Kingsley Amis (ed. Zachary Leader, HarperCollins 2000)

The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin (ed. Archie Burnett, Faber and Faber 2012)

The Poet’s Plight by James Booth (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2005)

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Presented by Lyn Lockwood.

Theme music: ‘The Horns Of The Morning’ by The Mechanicals Band. Buy ‘The Righteous Jazz’ at their Bandcamp page: https://themechanicalsband.bandcamp.com/album/the-righteous-jazz

Audio production by Simon Galloway.