ISBN 0 7206 1147 4
Biography
272pp
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First Boredom, Then Fear: The Life of Philip Larkin

Richard Bradford

Everyone has an image of Philip Larkin.

When Anthony Thwaite’s edition of Philip Larkin’s Letters was published in 1992 and Motion’s biography came out a year later, Larkin’s enemies seized on the new disclosures with a frenzy hardly witnessed since the McCarthy era. What had hitherto been regarded only as potential inclinations hinted at in his poems - misogyny and zenophobia in particular - were now indisputable facts, and since then Larkin’s reputation as a poet has been tarnished by his image as a human being. Richard Bradford’s new biography reveals that Larkin treated his prejudices and peculiarities with detached circumspection. Sometimes he shared them, self-mockingly, self-destructively, with his closest friends; he divided up his life so that some people knew him well but none completely. It was only in the poems that the parts began to resemble the whole.

The trajectory of his poetic writing was influenced principally by his friendship with Kingsley Amis. Without Larkin Amis’s immensely successful first novel, Lucky Jim, would not have been written. Its success caused Larkin to finally abandon his own ambitions as a novelist, to concentrate exclusively on his poetry, and his poetry would thereafter become his autobiography. Larkin’s poetry is in its own right magnificent, and readers of Bradford’s biography will be able to extend their appreciation of his art to an acquaintance with the artist at work.

• Engages directly with the controversy over Larkin’s supposed racism and misogyny
• Draws on never-before-seen material overlooked by recent studies
• Recent Larkin play Pretending to be Me in West End
• BBC drama Love Again broadcast to major acclaim
• A brand new edition of Larkin’s Collected Poems was released in 2003

‘[A] wonderful biography . . . This book, easily the best on Larkin yet to appear, is a masterful analysis of “the weirdly fatalistic weaving of his life and his writing”. Bradford is in such complete command of the subject matter, nothing escapes him. It is as if he had access to Larkin’s very thought processes. A great biography of a great artistic genius. Utterly magnificent.’ - Roger Lewis, Daily Express

‘Like Richard Bradford’s excellent study of Kingsley Amis (Lucky Him, 2001), First Boredom Then Fear is by no means the biography promised by the jacket blurb. As an interpretation, on the other hand, it is quite the best thing to appear on Larkin in ages . . . Bradford has contrived a single, terrible sentence by which to summarise his subject’s need, at whatever cost, to maintain his detachment: “In truth, what irritated Larkin most were the interdependencies that come with being alive” . . . As First Boredom, Then Fear sympathetically but not uncritically confirms, it was a miracle he lasted so long.’ - DJ Taylor, London Evening Standard

‘He [Bradford] has an academic’s gift for discerning and sorting out patterns, smelling out revealing connections. His interesting and important book, like Larkin, makes the complex seem almost simple.’ - PJ Kavanagh, Spectator

‘A remarkably comprehensive account of the poet’s life, loves and work . . . The book is rich in examples of [the] verse, but also in descriptions of the poet’s relationships with friends, lovers and colleagues.’ - Leicester Mercury

‘Through new close readings of Larkin’s poems and an analysis of the relationship between Larkin and Kingsley Amis, Richard Bradford gives us a refreshingly sympathetic assessment of the poet’s life. After the damaging disclosures of xenophobia and misogyny in the letters and Andrew Motion’s biography, Bradford points the way to reading what really matters: Larkin’s verse.’ - The London Review of Books

‘In his self-conscious, neurotically melancholy style, Larkin was quite funny about himself and his way of life, which Richard Bradford now anatomises with admirable thoroughness, clarity and even a certain charitable respect. Bradford had already published an excellent biography of [Kingsley ] Amis so he has been well able to present a stereoscopic view of the poet and the novelist and their correspondence with each other, with its elements of schoolboyish smutty jokiness and extremist right-wing irascibility.’ - Irish Times

Richard Bradford’s elegantly written and cogently argued critical biography is overdue corrective to misplaced moralising. His book is founded on a deep respect for, and love of, his subject’s curious greatness . . . Bradford never apologises for Larkin, as Motion sees fit to in his much more detailed life. He dismisses Motion’s rather priggish contention that 'the beautiful flowers of his poetry [are] growing on long stalks out pretty dismal ground.' Is that ground more dismal than, say, Yeats’s or Evelyn Waugh’s? In his lifetime, Larkin had to weather the simplistic charges of being ‘suburban' and 'parochial' made against his work by addled academics and inferior poets, who resented his gift of memorability. Bradford demonstrates how that gift was refined once he had found his unique voice.’ - Paul Bailey, Independent

‘Gripping . . . Most of us know better than to suppose artists are paragons and this biography does full justice, as it enumerates Larkin’s failings, to the quality of the writing that, in some part, flowed from them.’ - Christopher Gray, Oxford Mail

‘Thoroughly researched . . . Bradford offers endearing accounts of Larkin’s university days at Oxford where he forged lasting friendships with future novelist Kingsley Amis and other budding cultural figures, detailed portraits of complicated, ill-fated and emotionally distant affairs with women, as well as portrayals of Larkins development from flailing novelist to master poet. In this well-written depiction, fans will find much - from gossip to scholarship - to stoke their interest.’ - Publishers Weekly (USA)

'We may not agree entirely with Bradford's sentiments, but we can admire his unwavering belief in Larkin's genius and stature as a poet worthy of being brought in from the wasteland of the politically incorrect. His exhortation is to let Larkin speak through his poetry, through his reflections on love, failure, and human frailties.' - Dublin Sunday Business Post

'Bradford's book...places welcome emphases on matters that Motion glided over too lightly...' - John Banville, The New York Review of Books

RICHARD BRADFORD is Professor of English at Ulster University. He is the author of Lucky Him: The Biography of Kingsley Amis (‘An intelligent and interesting account of Amis’s life . . . Bradford is particlarly perceptive on the relationship with Philip Larkin, whose superior genius awed and inspired Amis.’ - Spectator)