Philip Larkin was born on 9 August 1922 at 2, Poultney Road, Radford, Coventry, the only son and younger child of Sydney Larkin (1884–1948) and his wife Eva Emily (1886–1977), daughter of first-class excise officer William James Day. Sydney Larkin’s family originated in Kent, but had lived since at least the eighteenth century at Lichfield, Staffordshire, where they were in trade first as …

