Zachary Leader is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton. He grew up in California but has lived in Britain for over fifty years and has dual US/UK citizenship. He was educated at Northwestern University, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Harvard and is the biographer of Kingsley Amis and edited the Letters of Kingsley Amis. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and General Editor of The Oxford History of Life-Writing, a 7-volume series published by OUP.

PLS Trustee Daniel Vince is a soon-to-be graduate of the University of York, where he earned his MA by Research on the post-war working class novel. He has recently started work on his PhD entitled ‘The New University in Post-War British Literature’, in which Larkin and the University of Hull play a significant role – other writers include Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge and Kingsley Amis. A trustee of The Philip Larkin Society, our e-newsletter editor and a member of our events committee,. 

Today’s conversation focuses on John Wain’s Hurry On Down (1953) and Philip Larkin’s Jill (1946).

Notes and further reading and event links

The Life of Saul Bellow by Zachary Leader (Cape, 2015)

The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Oxford Handbooks) 

by Michael O'Neill (Editor) (Oxford Handbooks, 2017)

The Life of Kingsley Amis by Zachary Leader (Vintage, 2007)

The Letters of Kingsley Amis by Zachary Leader (Editor), (Harper Collins, 2001)

Cultural Nationalism and Modern Manuscripts: Kingsley Amis, Saul Bellow, Franz Kafka

Zachary Leader

https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/cultural-nationalism-and-modern-manuscripts-kingsley-amis-saul-be 2013

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (1928)

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)

Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881)

Jill by Philip Larkin (1946)

Hurry on Down by John Wain (1953)

Changing Places by David Lodge (1975)

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937)

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)

The Movement: English Poetry and Fiction of the 1950's by Blake Morrison (1980)

The Movement Reconsidered: Essays on Larkin, Amis, Gunn, Davie and Their Contemporaries by Zachary Leader (OUP, 2011)

The Importance of Philip Larkin by John Wain, The American Scholar, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Summer 1986), pp. 349-364 

Interviews with Britain's Angry Young Men: Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Bill Hopkins, John Wain and Colin Wilson: 2 (Milford Series) by Dale Salwak (Borgo Press, 2007)

Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love by James Booth (2015, Bloomsbury)

Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life by Andrew Motion (Faber, 1994)

Philip Larkin Selected Letters ed. Anthony Thwaite (Faber and Faber, 1993)

Out of Reach: The Poetry of Philip Larkin by Andrew Swarbrick (1997)

Larkin poems mentioned:

Livings, The Importance of Elsewhere, The Whitsun Weddings, High Windows, Absences, If, My Darling, This Be The Verse

Other references:

The Sun (British tabloid newspaper, founded 1964), John Braine (English novelist 1922-1986), Ben Johnson (English playwright- 1597-1637), Franz Kafka (Czech novelist, 1883- 1924)

Book tickets for Chichester event here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/philip-larkin-society-members-event-at-chichester-cathedral-tickets-781230199557?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

Register for schools event here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/higher-windows-post-16-english-enrichment-day-at-the-university-of-hull-tickets-737140074807?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

Register for Conference 2024 here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/philip-larkin-society-conference-2024-tickets-769584597247?aff=oddtdtcreator