Walking with the Ancestors - Philip Larkin

Hostile Surroundings

Between shifts in the reading room and lending library, Larkin took advantage of his antiquated surroundings to work on what he regarded as his true vocation; writing. 'Landladies did not really want to provide fires in the morning and I wrote my novel in the library before taking it back with me to work at after lunch' he later wrote. In fact, Larkin not only completed his first and only two novels, Jill and A Girl In Winter, as a Wellington resident but also published his first collection of poetry, The North Ship.

In this respect, his workplace proved to be something of a boon and Larkin reserved considerable ire for the 'hostile surroundings' of Glentworth, his Mill Bank home. Lambasting everything from his landlady's cooking to the sound of bugles emanating from the nearby Drill Hall and the radio in his neighbour's room, Larkin complained, in another letter to Sutton, 'I can write at a pinch if my fingers are dead and my bones aching with the cold but not with a lot of rubbishy singing and music beating the air'. In later life, Larkin spoke of his need for deprivation as an artistic inspiration, which could explain why he endured two self-inflicted years at Glentworth before moving to his final Wellington address of 7 Ladycroft in early 1946.