Not Rotterdam or Anywhere, Liverpool or Rome. Hull.

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A new EXHIBITION ABOUT LARKIN OPENS AT THE BRYNMOR JONES, HULL

Famously a curmudgeon, misanthropic and brilliant, Philip Larkin is remembered for his poetry, his complicated love life and being a Librarian. He is of a particular time and place, like a British built car from the 1970's, familiar, flawed and reassuringly drab.  Despite having all the blessings of been born in a cathedral city and then educated at Oxford, he (like many others since) only really flourished creatively when he went to live and work in Hull. The City of Hull now proudly makes claim to two of the greatest poets in the English language; Andrew Marvell [who didn't muck about at the Grammar School, securing a place at Cambridge when only 13) and 300-hundred years later, its now cherished adopted son Larkin.

But like many adoptions, not all went smoothly from day one.  Upon arriving in Hull in 1955, Larkin cheerily described it as “a hole, with witless, crapulous people" but, as the relationship deepened and the incessant breeze slowed his progress cycling the Avenues, he came to see beyond the town as a “fish smelling dump” and to embrace the place. Writing in The Whitsun Weddings, he describes arriving on a train, seeing the estuary widen, finding the surprise of large town where only "relatives and salesmen come", and undeterred, he heads out to the suburbs, beyond the fringes of the place to find a beach: "an unfenced existence.  Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach."    Larkin stayed and over the next thirty years, Hull became home to a man who brilliantly honed his verse so that he could make a joyous wedding seem like a funeral, or a long-lost friend feel like a newly discovered ailment.  

I went to live in Hull thirty years ago this autumn and went back briefly just this month as part of the Hull 2017 City of Culture celebrations.  I drank in some familiar pubs, watched some Rugby, met some friends and even took time to explore Larkin's library.  It is extraordinary.  They have hidden all the books behind opaque sliding screens, like some post-modernist joke.  You can come in and browse, and explore: but no reading the books!  Cheery volunteers encourage you to take in the scale of the place, see the visiting National Portrait Gallery exhibition, or enjoy a double-espresso in the vast coffee shop across from the light-filled ‘willy-Wonka’ lift lobby.  Head up, take in the view, but you won’t find any books. Somehow, I felt Larkin might appreciate the efforts made since his death to keep the students' grubby fingers from his carefully indexed tomes.

In the evening, we headed out "East", but not to find Larkin’s endless unbroken view, but far far away in East Hull to see another of the City's adopted sons, Paul Heaton, play a huge outdoor gig at the dilapidated old 'Hull KR' ground.   The journey there and back was like a scene from a Cecil B. DeMille movie.  Some 27,000 of us tried to make the same journey with the help and support of half-a dozen shuttle buses and the disinterest of the world's worst taxi service.  Hull has two unique civic aspects that are hard not to notice.  It has white phone boxes that nobody uses and it employs the world's worst taxis.  These are strange elevated vehicles with no windows, designed it seems, to ferry you home patched-up from A&E late at night but constructed so that you remain oblivious to where you might be going.  Suffice to say, on the day when this City of Culture hosted a Bowie-inspired retrospective, lefty-chanteuse Charlotte Church, outdoor theatre in Newland Avenue, Wigan v Hull FC, an auspicious Philip Larkin AGM and a major 'festival' style outdoor gig in the City, the taxi drivers collectively shrugged, headed to West Hull, lit a fag and determinedly stayed there.

Clearly the City of Hull has a new pulse and a new confidence, proclaimed high on billowing flags lining the broad newly-pedestrianised streets. The University (the city’s biggest employer) has grown immensely with the area near Pearson Park adorned with an array of deli's, trendy wine-bars and cool shops to quench all thirsts and tastes.  Culture is a powerful lever that other cities, notably Liverpool and Newcastle, have worked successfully and it would be petty to quibble with the cultural ambition Hull has surfaced this year.  But somehow, the City still doesn't seem to have enough people who move here and stay, or new capital or jobs, or investment.  Even its grubby neighbour Doncaster seems to have poked two fingers towards the city.  When you catch the train to Hull, the platform you board is bizarrely numbered “0”.  So if you are a relative or salesmen (or student), you have to leave for Hull from Platform Zero.

Heading back on the train to London, someone suggested that the likely next candidate for UK City of Culture would Coventry....Larkin's birthplace.  Like Hull, a proud town bombed heavily in the War, restored with vigour and still resolutely unfashionable.  Sounds the perfect place.