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Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Michael Pennington

James Booth

Libby Spurrier

Joanna Green

Book of the Week: Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love: Episode 1

Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love

Episode 1

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love, Episode 1

Larkin, aged 17, goes up to Oxford to read English and meets a jazz-loving kindred spirit.

4 Extra Debut. At 17, Larkin goes up to Oxford to read English, meeting jazz-loving kindred spirit, Kingsley Amis. Read by Michael Pennington.

The 17-year-old Philip Larkin goes up to Oxford to read English. In the quadrangle of St John's, he meets a jazz-loving kindred spirit in Kingsley Amis.

Written by James Booth and read by Michael Pennington. 

Philip Larkin was that rare thing among poets - a household name in his own lifetime. Lines such as 'Never such innocence again' and 'Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three' made him one of the most popular poets of the last century.

Larkin's reputation as a man, however, has been more controversial. A solitary librarian known for his pessimism, he disliked exposure and had no patience with the literary circus. And when, in 1992, the publication of his Selected Letters laid bare his compartmentalised personal life, accusations of duplicity, faithlessness, racism and misogyny were levelled against him.

There is, of course, no requirement that poets should be likeable or virtuous, but James Booth asks whether art and life were really so deeply at odds with each other. Can the poet who composed the moving 'Love Songs in Age' have been such a cold-hearted man? Can he who uttered the playful, self-deprecating words 'Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth' really have been so boorish?

A very different public image is offered by those who shared the poet's life - the women with whom he was romantically involved, his friends and his university colleagues. It is with their personal testimony, including access to previously unseen letters, that Booth reinstates a man misunderstood - not a gaunt, emotional failure, but a witty, provocative and entertaining presence, delightful company; an attentive son and a man devoted to the women he loved.

Abridged by Libby Spurrier.  
 
Produced by Joanna Green
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Book of the Week: Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

By James Booth. Moving biography of the renowned English poet.

By James Booth. Moving biography of the renowned English poet. Abridged by Libby Spurrier and read by Michael Pennington.

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