Philip Larkin (1922–1985) was born in Coventry, England, and is regarded as one of the greatest British poets of the post-war era. Educated at St. John's College, Oxford, he spent his professional life as a librarian, ultimately serving as University Librarian at the University of Hull from 1955 until his death. His collections The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964), and High Windows (1974) established him as a poet of austere wit and elegiac precision, preoccupied with mortality, loneliness, and the texture of ordinary English life. He declined the position of Poet Laureate in 1984. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1965 and the Companion of Honour in 1985.