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Philip Larkin: Quick Facts

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News •

Douglas Dunn obituary: Poet and teacher who wrote about class and grief • Oct. 19, 2026, 4:27 AM ET (BBC)
Douglas Dunn, poet who won the Whitbread Prize for Elegies, his account of the death of his first wife • Oct. 18, 2026, 8:15 AM ET (The Telegraph)

Facts

Also Known As Philip Arthur Larkin
Born August 9, 1922 • Coventry • England
Died December 2, 1985 (aged 63) • Kingston upon Hull • England
Notable Works “The Less Deceived”
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Sir Stephen Spender
English poet
Novelist Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark
British writer
D.H. Lawrence
D.H. Lawrence
English writer
St. John Henry Newman
St. John Henry Newman
British theologian
Graham Greene, 1982
Graham Greene
British author
Southey, detail of a pencil and watercolour portrait by R. Hancock, 1796; in the National Portrait Gallery, London
Robert Southey
English author
Portrait of Gilbert Keith Chesterton wearing glasses and a suit, with a mustache and tousled hair, looking directly at the camera.
G.K. Chesterton
British author
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Peter Ackroyd
British author, biographer, critic and scholar
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Sylvia Townsend Warner
British author
Quiller-Couch, 1943
Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
British writer
Osbert Sitwell, 1965
Sir Osbert Sitwell, 5th Baronet
English writer
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D.J. Enright
British poet
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Sara Coleridge
British author
Smollett, detail of an oil painting by an unknown artist, about 1770; in the National Portrait Gallery, London
Tobias Smollett
Scottish novelist
Painting of Samuel Johnson showing Johnson seated at a desk with a quill in hand and papers before him, wearing a brown coat and white wig.
Samuel Johnson
English author
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
British author
W.H. Auden
W. H. Auden
British poet
The man who invented Middle-earth
J.R.R. Tolkien
English author
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John Berger
British essayist and cultural thinker
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Arthur Young
English writer

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