Winifred Dawson reading 'Love and Larkin'.

Tiny In All That Air

This talk was given to the PLS in 2001 by Winifred Dawson. Winifred was born in London, but educated in Belfast which is where she met Larkin when they were both working at Queen’s University Library. Win also went on to write herself and published a biography of Amy Audrey Locke, a muse for the poet WB Yeats. Win opens with a reflection on Larkin’s love for his parents, However, the talk is mainly about Larkin’s relationship with the women in his life: Ruth Bowman, Winifred, Monica Jones, Patsy Strang, Maeve Brennan (who is listening in the audience) and Betty Mackereth. Ruth, Maeve and Win went on to form a friendship, having first met at Ruth's house in 1993, 8 years after Larkin died. Maeve Brennan can be heard very briefly at the end of the talk.

The talk is full of humour, and a frank account of her feelings about Larkin, as well as readings of Larkin’s poetry and letters. The poetry readings were not recorded at the time of the talk, and so are instead read by members of the current Philip Larkin Society committee. We have also added the 1975 poem ‘When first we faced’ after Toads Revisited as a second poem about Betty Mackereth. Books and writers mentioned:

Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life by Andrew Motion(1993)

Philip Larkin Selected Letters ed. Anthony Thwaite (1993)

Playing the Harlot- Patsy Avis (published by Virago in 1996)

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)

Peter Ackroyd, Katherine Mansfield, Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two- Birds (1939), The Real Charlotte by Somerville and Ross (1894), John Betjeman, Scenes from Provincial Life by William Cooper (1950) , DH Lawrence,

The Porter’s Daughter: The Life of Amy Audrey Locke by Winifred Dawson (Sarsen Press, 2014)

Larkin’s review of The Girls by Henry de Montherlant (1959) can be found in Required Writing (1983)

Poems mentioned- poems which are read in the episode are in bold:

Days, Faith Healing, An April Sunday Brings the Snow , Reference Back, Mother, Summer, I Wild Oats, No Road, Within the dream you said, Show Saturday, Talking in Bed, Poem About Oxford, Latest Face, Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album, At thirty-one, when some are rich He hears his beloved, Long roots, Maiden Name, Broadcast, Morning at last, Toads Revisited, When First We Faced, To My Wife, Counting, An Arundel Tomb

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/28/winifred-dawson Ann Thwaite’s obituary of Win Dawson

https://philiplarkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/About-Larkin-01.pdf First issue of About Larkin

Further reading:

Philip Larkin, Life, Art and Love by James Booth (Bloomsbury, 2014)

Thank you to Jim Orwin for the original recording and sleeve notes. Thank you to Graham Chesters, Simon Smith, Daniel Vince, Phil Pullen, Clarissa Hard, Rachael Galletly, Alex Davis, Gavin Hogg and Julian wild for reading the poems.

Produced by Lyn Lockwood and Gavin Hogg

PLS Membership and information: philiplarkin.com

Theme music: 'The Horns Of The Morning' by The Mechanicals Band. Buy 'The Righteous Jazz' at their Bandcamp page: https://themechanicalsband.bandcamp.com/album/the-righteous-jazz