A NEW book on famous Coventry-born poet Philip Larkin aims to debunk the misconception he hated the city.
Earlsdon-based journalist and author Chris Arnot’s latest book argues Larkin has a hidden affection for Coventry, the city where the literary great’s love of libraries and poetry began.
Mr Arnot says this is despite Larkin speaking in less than fond terms about the city where he went to school and spent his first 18 years.
He famously wrote his childhood had been ‘unspent’ in the city in his poem ‘I Remember, I Remember’.
Mr Arnot says he aims to reveal some of Larkin’s fonder memories of Coventry.
He says the book named ‘Larkin About in Coventry: The City where a Great Poet Grew Up’ will contrast pre-World War Two Coventry with its new identity as a modern student city.
He said: “It is not another biography of Larkin, it’s looking at Coventry anew, in light of its City of Culture 2021 status – through the prism of Larkin.
“Whenever you write Coventry off it reinvents itself and it’s now reinventing itself as a university city with two thriving universities and a sort of youthful vibrancy.
“It’s about a very different Coventry from the one that Larkin remembered and I also want to say he remembered the city more fondly than many people imagine and dispel some of the myths about that.
“It has always been thought he hated the place. But he had good memories as well as bad when living in Coventry.
“He always said ‘it wasn’t the place’s fault’.
“The things he liked about Coventry he has written about. And he was devastated when it was bombed.
“He loved the Old Library which in his day would have been on the cobble streets very close to the Golden Cross Pub.
“He used to borrow books when he was 17 or 18 and then go into the pub.
“He liked the area around the cathedral obviously before it was bombed – when it was a medieval city.
“He wasn’t so keen on the rebuilding of Coventry because he had very fond memories.
“After the war his former house on Manor Road went under the ring road.”
Mr Arnot said the book attempts to go behind Larkin’s curmudgeonly facade and explore the places in his youth where he was most content.
In an interview for The Coventrian Magazine (Henry VIII School magazine) in the 1970s, Larkin said: “I suppose the things I remember with most affection about Coventry are the old town around the cathedral (much of it now destroyed), watching [rugby] football at Coundon Road, going to the Central Library in the evening to change books, and much further back being taken on walks along lanes quite near where we lived on Manor Road, now long built over.”
In 1974 he wrote to his mother Eva, addressed as Dearest Old Creature: “I think so often about our days in Coventry.
“How the traffic used to go up and down St Patrick’s Road, and I’d come home in the evening to find you ‘picking fruit’.”
Larkin was born in Radford, Coventry, in 1922 until his family moved to Manor Road in Cheylesmore.
Despite being one of the country’s most recognised 20th century writers, he famously declined an OBE in 1968 and the chance to become the UK’s Poet Laureate in 1984.
But he did accept a Coventry Award of Merit – one of the city’s highest civil honours.
He has a plaque commemorating him at the city’s railway station.
Last year, a prominent city centre pub on the corner of the Burges and Corporation Street was re-named ‘The Phillip Larkin’.
He was also a symbol of Hull’s UK City of Culture 2017 celebrations, after spending many decades as a librarian at Hull University.
Coventry has sought to reclaim Larkin as its own in preparation for its own City of Culture celebrations.
“Larkin About in Coventry, the city where a great poet grew up”, ISBN 978-1-908837-10-3 is published by Takahe, price £10.95.
