Newly seen letters show Philip Larkin's close relationship with mother

Philip and Eva Larkin corresponded twice weekly for about 35 years, with the pair exchanging minute details of one another’s daily lives

He was terrified of marriage, living a life of tangled relationships with women who became his muses. Poet Philip Larkin’s view of marriage may partly have been coloured by his mother’s warnings of its disadvantages, previously unpublished letters reveal.

In 1952, Eva Larkin told her son: “Marriage would be no certain guarantee as to socks being always mended, or meals ready when they are wanted. Neither would it be wise to marry just for those comforts. There are other things just as important.”

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