Publisher unveils trail around poet’s favourite haunts

Jean Hartley, who first met the poet in 1955, unveiled the first sign on the Larkin Trail, which follows in his footsteps.

The walk which starts at Hull Royal Hotel, where he used to take his girlfriends and takes in City Hall, where he indulged his passion for jazz.

It calls at Marks & Spencer in Whitefriargate, where the writer wrote of his encounter with “cheap clothes/Set out in simple sizes plainly”, and takes in the evocatively named Land of Green Ginger, his home in Pearson Park, and Hull University where he worked for 30 years.

United Creatives, a design agency from Manchester, came up with the Victorian-inspired signs, which carry some of the famous lines from his poems and have been painted or fixed on buildings.

Dr Hartley, upon whose book Philip Larkin’s Hull and East Yorkshire the trail is based, said she was sure he would have approved. “I think he would be delighted because he was so keen to be known for his poems rather than his person and this is what this trail achieves. I find it quite emotional being remind ed of him. He was such a good friend – so amusing.”

Despite Larkin’s reputation as a bon viveur – two pubs are featured in the trail – she said he eventually gave up on pubs as he was so deaf. In fact his favourite place was the disused Spring Bank cemetery. “It was very wild and overgrown and luxuriant and he loved to go there to sort his head out.”

The Larkin Trail website www.thelarkintrail.co.uk enables visitors to explore the trail virtually.

The site hosts Larkin reading his own poems, photographs, and artwork and reminiscences.