The poet was one of the funniest, kindest men I ever knew
It’s 40 years since Philip Larkin died, aged 63, on 2nd December 1985. It’s 50 years since he first came up the steps of my modest house in Oxford and sat, shy and stammering, in our sitting room. Here was one of the greatest living English poets in our midst, and one felt some profundity would surely be forthcoming. After a bit of silence, and looking at the modest back garden through the window, and then walking to the front window and surveying the tiny space there, he asked, ‘Where do you put out your rubbish?’ The mood was lightened when my first-born daughter, as shy as he was, came into the room – following Francis, a large black and white rabbit. Larkin melted. When, a few years later, Francis died, Emily received a perfectly worded letter of condolence. Larkin once wrote, ‘When I was a kid, I thought I...
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