Matthew Adams

Larkin’s misty parks and moors — in all their lacerating beauty

A hitherto unpublished collection of the poet’s photographs range from affectionate studies of friends to sombre landscapes viewed from high windows

issue 12 December 2015

When Philip Larkin went up to St John’s College, Oxford, in the early 1940s, he found himself in a world of deprivation and departures. The arrival of war had ruined any hope he might have had of living the sybaritic student life mythologised by Evelyn Waugh; the majority of the younger dons had departed to serve in the forces or the ministries; the few undergraduates at the college who hadn’t already followed suit could expect to be called up soon.

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