Saturday 12th June - 2.30pm
The Talbot Suite, Willerby Manor Hotel
Anne Fine
Distinguished Guest Lecture: Philip Larkin, A Personal View
Contact: John Osborne, School of American Studies, Hull University

Author of such novels as Taking the Devil's Advice and Madam Doubtfire (the basis for the Robin Williams blockbuster film Mrs Doubtfire), winner of the Guardian's Literature Award, the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award (twice).

Saturday 12th June - 5.00pm
The Exhibition Area, Brynmor Jones Library University of Hull
Philip Larkin & Photography
Official Opening
Contact: John Osborne, School of American Studies, Hull University

Philip Larkin excelled in many spheres: a worldclass poet; a distinguished novelist; a major jazz critic; a provocative literary essayist and reviewer; and an outstanding University librarian.

It is much less well known that for a time he pursued photography with something of the zeal he brought to these other enthusiasms, experimenting with photographic techniques and gathering his pictures into thematically unified albums.

This exhibition, the first of its kind, combines family snaps of his childhood (a much less gloomy affair than one might imagine) with examples of the mature Larkin's forays into portraiture (especially of his companions, literary friends such as Kingsley Amis, John Betjeman and John Wain), landscape photography, cityscapes and, not least, self-portraits. Many of these images are valid works of art in their own right; but even the lesser ones testify to the passion for photography that informs poems such as Whatever Happened?, Wild Oats and Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album.

There is even a snapshot of the hedgehog famously memorialised in The Mower!

Thursday 17th June - 2pm
Parks School
Lion Mountain:
African Music and Dance
Free

Parks School is twinned with Samaria Primary School in Freetown.

The link is one of friendship, learning about each others' cultures and exchanging educational ideas. The children have exchanged pen pal letters and each class is twinned with a class in the other school. The main focus of the link is learning through music.

Children at the Parks School will have three days of workshops on the Music and Dance of Sierra Leone on the 15th, 16th and 17th June, with a performance showcasing their work on Thursday 17th June at 2pm. Parents and the public are welcome. There is no charge!