Larkin at Sixty

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) was the best-loved poet of his generation, and the recipient of innumerable honours, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and the W H Smith Award. In Larkin at Sixty, a tribute to him on his sixtieth birthday, twenty writers came together to celebrate the man and the poet with specially written pieces. Some of them are reminiscences, some look at aspects of his professional life as librarian, some consider his taste as it revealed itself in his writings on jazz and in his editing of the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. The relationship between his novels and his poems is examined, and several essays explore the poems themselves. Three poets contribute hitherto unpublished poems. Together, all these illuminate with affection and insight the work, the man behind the work, and the appeal of both. The editor, Anthony Thwaite, edited Larkin's Collected Poems, Selected Letters and Further Requirements, and became one of Larkin's chosen literary executors