Unseen letters from Philip Larkin in tomorrow's Telegraph – don't miss
We have previously unpublished letters from Philip Larkin to his lover and friend Monica Jones in Saturday's Daily Telegraph Review section, taken from Anthony Thwaite's new collection Philip Larkin:...
View ArticleWhat would Philip Larkin make of our Afghanistan policy?
Like my colleague and fellow curmudgeon-in-training, Michael Deacon, I'm a huge fan of Philip Larkin. And, re-reading his Collected Poems over the New Year, I was struck (as others have been) by the...
View ArticleBritishness isn't about liberal buzzwords. It's about history, poetry and smut
It’s the age old problem – how do we teach Britishness when it’s so damn hard to define what it is? For me, the essence of being a Brit is the Carry On movies and their saucy Anglo-Saxon prose. If...
View ArticlePhilip Larkin: our brilliant and most misunderstood poet
From the Sunday Telegraph Before summer started and the rains came, I went to Oxford to see Peter Hitchens give a sermon. It was Whitsun, and we all squeezed into the tiny chapel at St Hugh’s to hear a...
View ArticleMemorable poetry gives you that tell-tale tingle
From the Sunday Telegraph I stumbled on to something interesting reading Philip Larkin’s letters. In 1972, when he was compiling the Oxford Book of 20th Century English Verse, he wrote to John Betjeman...
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