The recently discovered letter from Philip Larkin to Rachel Trickett in 1968 concerning the Oxford professorship of poetry (‘My idea of hell is a literary party’, 1 June) is not the only occasion when Larkin showed reluctance to apply for posts in Oxford. In the archive of the History Centre in Hull, there is a letter from Larkin to a colleague in Oxford in 1978, thanking him for news of the vacant post of Bodley’s librarian, but saying that he is reluctant to apply. There is nothing to show that Larkin did apply for the post. There is also correspondence in this file on matters ranging from a request for a critical essay on John Betjeman to his resignation from Hull University senior common room, and letters to students asking for advice on the interpretation of his poetry, or his assessment of theirs – he wrote to Vikram Seth in 1978 that he read Seth’s poems with great interest and a good deal of enjoyment. His helpful advice to students shows he was not perhaps the misanthropist described by some of his earlier biographers.
Peter Ayling
Kirk Ella, East Yorkshire
• Philip Larkin did sometimes accept dinner invitations, and at the Oxford home of the poet Anne Ridler, who knew of his deafness, was offered as after-dinner amusement a showing of one of her husband’s home movies, a trial potentially even worse in most situations than sherry drill. But Vivian Ridler, then printer to the university, was an accomplished film-maker, and showed Larkin his sound animation of a Victorian print of the university boat race. At the end of the film, Larkin thoughtfully, and with no trace of irony, steepled his fingers and said: “Now that’s what I call a work of art.” Anne was not so rewarded. She was not included in PL’s Oxford Book of Modern Verse.
Richard Wilson
Oxford