The Larkin Statue, Hull: The Yorkshire librarian who became a much-loved post-war poet

He grew up in Coventry and after studying at Oxford worked in Shropshire and Belfast, but is most closely associated with Hull, where he became librarian of the city’s university in 1955.

While living in a rented second-floor flat overlooking Pearson Park to the north of the city centre, Larkin slowly began to earn his reputation as one of the UK’s foremost post-war poets.

Slowly, because his output has been said to average two-and-a-half poems a year.

Among these works was a collection of 32 poems titled The Whitsun Weddings, which when published in 1964 was an instant critical and commercial success.

The title poem described a train journey Larkin made south from Paragon Station in Hull on a hot Whit Saturday afternoon and included his oft-quoted observation of the view over the Humber being “where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet”.

His final collection, High Windows, appeared in 1974 and included Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel, a poignant evocation of the emptiness of Hull’s best-known hotel after its then-principal customers, commercial travellers, had gone home.

Much of the £80,000 cost of Martin Jennings’ bronze statue was raised at a charity auction attended by Hull-born celebrities Sir Tom Courtenay and Maureen Lipman.

It was positioned on a slate ellipse just yards from the entrance to the Royal Station Hotel’s Paragon Station entrance and unveiled by the Lord Mayor of Hull on 2nd December 2010, the exact 25th anniversary of the poet’s death.