Patricia Avis Strang Murphy (1928–1977) was a sexual partner of English poet Philip Larkin in the early half of the 1950s. At the time, she was married to Colin Strang, a friend of Larkin's and a lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Queen's University, Belfast, where Larkin was Under-Librarian. As Patricia Avis, she is the author of Playing the Harlot (1996, Virago), a roman à clef; the character of Rollo Jute is thought to have been inspired by Larkin.
Strang discovered and read some of Larkin's sexual diaries.[1]
It is possible that Larkin's poem Reference Back, from the collection The Whitsun Weddings, addresses Patsy Strang.[2]
Larkin wrote some of his most revealing letters to Strang.
Strang would later go on to marry the poet Richard Murphy.