News at Eleven: Like the Selected Letters, they catch his wit,

and his abiding sadness. But they also reveal [Philip] Larkin's deep love and admiration for a woman who was clever, eccentric, loud, unusual, flamboyant, opinionated and strong. In my experience, misogynists tend not to go a bundle for women with minds of their own.

It's obvious to me that it was not women Larkin hated, but the idea of marriage to one--and that seems fair enough. At his home in Norfolk, Anthony Thwaite, Larkin's friend and the editor both of the Selected Letters and of this new volume, laughs. "Yes!" he says. "Marriage: it's like promising to stand on one leg for the rest of your life, isn't it?" Thwaite believes that Larkin loved women.

from The Guardian: In search of the real Philip Larkin

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