Hitchens on Philip Larkin


Well worth a click (simply click above) and a look.

Martin Amis remembers Philip Larkin as an occasional visitor to his childhood home. Now, more than 25 years after the poet’s death, he reconsiders the ‘instantly unforgettable’ work of this complex figure – and explains why Larkin is so revered by novelists

Philip Larkin on holiday in the 1960s

In the mid-1970s I edited the Weekend Competition in the literary pages of the New Statesman (with the judicious assistance of Julian Barnes). One week we threw down the following challenge: contestants were asked to reimagine Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” in the style of any modern poet. It was a corpulent postbag: many Gunns, Hugheses, Hills, Porters, Lowells, Bishops, Plaths; and many, many Larkins. First place went to our most trusted star – a reclusive gentleman named Martin Fagg. At the Comp we gave out small cash prizes (Fagg got the maximal fiver), but no prizes are now on offer for guessing which poet he had in mind. This was his opening stanza:

You mean you like that poncy crap