Out of reach

Since his death in 1985, Philip Larkin, generally regarded as England's finest post-war poet, has become the subject of fierce debate. The publication of his Collected Poems, his letters and his official biography has led to a radical reassessment of one of our most popular and elusive writers. This new study of Larkin's poetry is the first to draw on previously unpublished manuscript material, as well as on the biographical revelations. But, as the author shows, the relationship between Larkin's life and work is especially problematic. Rather than interpreting the poems by way of the life, Andrew Swarbrick examines in detail the rhetorical strategies which make Larkin's poems so universally appealing and yet so ultimately mysterious. In doing so, he reveals a Larkin altogether more adventurous, challenging and disturbing than his critics, and some of his admirers, have hitherto encountered.