‘An egg sculpted in lard, with goggles on’

Larkin’s downbeat letters to Fay Godwin among archive acquired by British Library

That’s how Philip Larkin described a portrait of himself; another looked, he said, like ‘CS Lewis on a drugs charge’. These self-deprecating remarks have emerged from letters in the photographer Fay Godwin’s archive, recently acquired by the British Library. You can see a selection of her impressive portraits, including the Hermit of Hull, Ted Hughes and Doris Lessing here.