The miserable life of Larkin’s mistress, kept on tap for kinky sex and holidays
Using unpublished letters, John Sutherland's book Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me reveals the tragic squandering of a brilliant woman
Rupert Christiansen
25 April 2021
“Iam simply ridiculous – a reject, an incapable” wrote Monica Jones in 1955. This wasn’t a passing moment of hysterical despair: over her entire adult life, she would refer to herself as “the old bag”, an “ordinary little worm” or “a dull unleavened lump” in self-lacerating recognition that her existence was a pathetic flop. And that is how posterity is in danger of picturing Philip Larkin’s mistress: a harpy in horn-rimmed spectacles who drank and shouted and made a fool of herself in an increasingly desperate campaign to keep hold of the man she loved.
