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Michaelmas term, 1940. 18-year-old John Kemp has come down from Lancashire to Oxford University to begin his scholarship studying English. But when he invents an imaginary sister to win the attention of a rich but unreliable ‘friend’, and then falls in love for real, undergraduate life becomes its own strange, complex world …
‘The best-loved English poet of the past 100 years.’ Sunday Times
‘Absolutely contemporary – perhaps even prophetic.’ Joyce Carol Oates
‘Remarkable … A book about innocence.’ Simon Garfield
‘A cryptic literary manifesto [about] discovering a literary personality, and the consolation art can provide.’ Andrew Motion
Philip Larkin was an English novelist, librarian and celebrated poet, who has been awarded numerous honours including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Born in Coventry in 1922, he was educated at King Henry VIII School and Oxford University. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings…
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A century after his birth, we mark the Philip Larkin centenary in 2022. To celebrate a new edition of his …
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In the Philip Larkin's centenary year, we republish an article remembering him by autobiographer and publisher Jean Hartley.