Patsy Strang

Throughout the life of the poet Philip Larkin a number of women had important roles which were notable influences on his poetry. Since Larkin's death biographers have highlighted the importance of female relationships on Larkin: when Andrew Motion's biography was serialised in the Independent in 1993, the second instalment of extracts was dedicated to the topic. In 1999 Ben Brown's play Larkin with Women dramatised Larkin's relationships with three of his lovers, and more recently writers such as Martin Amis have continued to comment on this subject.

Another important influence on Larkin was his long-standing friend Kingsley Amis. The biographer Richard Bradford contends that over the course of Larkin's life the relationship with Amis transformed from one of mutual appreciation and encouragement, and later Larkin "was subterraneously driven by resentment and near hatred" of Amis.

Eva Larkin was Philip Larkin's mother. Born in 1886 she lived until 1977, dying 29 years after her domineering husband. "Reference Back" from The Whitsun Weddings, is a poem written from his mother's viewpoint or his imagination of it.

Mother and son wrote to each other twice weekly for about 35 years from 1940, when Larkin went to Oxford University. The writer Philip Pullen has described these letters as “very significant”, and proof that “the relationship was deeper and more valuable to Larkin than anybody might have thought”.

Ruth Bowman was a schoolgirl living in Wellington when Larkin moved there in 1943 to become librarian at the public library. They met the following year when she came into the library. She was 16, an academically minded schoolgirl, and the person with whom Larkin had his first sexual encounter – a year later – when he visited her at King's College London. Their relationship continued and in 1948 they became engaged. The engagement was broken in 1950, shortly before Larkin moved to Northern Ireland. These events are referred to sardonically in the poem "Wild Oats", written in the early 1960s.

Larkin's long and extremely close relationship with Monica Jones dated from the autumn of 1946, when they met at Leicester University College. Jones had been appointed as an assistant lecturer in English in January 1946 and Larkin arrived in September, as an assistant librarian. "Both had been at Oxford (he at St John's, she at St Hugh's), between 1940 and 1943, but had not met. Both had first class degrees in English. They had been born in the same year, 1922, and came from rather similar provincial middle-class backgrounds." For the first few years of the relationship, Larkin was involved with Ruth Bowman, but when Bowman broke off the engagement, "Monica quickly became central to Larkin's attention." Jones and Larkin had a holiday cottage at Haydon Bridge where they spent many summers together. He left the bulk of his estate to her when he died in 1985. She died on 15 February 2001.

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Wikipedia