Throughout the life of the poet Philip Larkin, multiple women had important roles which were significant influences on his poetry. Since Larkin's death in 1985, biographers have highlighted the importance of female relationships on Larkin: when Andrew Motion's biography was serialised in The Independent in 1993, the second installment of extracts was dedicated to the topic.[1] In 1999, Ben Brown's play Larkin with Women dramatised Larkin's relationships with three of his lovers,[2] and more recently writers such as Martin Amis, continued to comment on this subject.[3]
Amis is the son of the British novelist, and Larkin's long-standing friend, Kingsley Amis. While primarily a novelist, Amis also wrote more than six volumes of poetry.[4] Biographer Richard Bradford contends that, over the course of Larkin's life, his relationship with Amis transformed from one of mutual appreciation and encouragement, to a much more fraught dynamic. Bradford has stated that in the later years of their relationship Larkin "was subterraneously driven by resentment and near hatred" of Amis.[5]
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