"Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin" (1997)
Context: Philip Larkin, a big, fat, bald librarian at the University of Hull, was unquestionably England's unofficial laureate: our best-loved poet since the war; better loved for our poet than John Betjeman, who was loved also for his charm, his famous beagle, his patrician Bohemianism and his televisual charisma, all of which Larkin notably lacked.
Ten years later, Larkin is now something like a pariah, or an untouchable.
Interview in The Observer, 1990
“I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.”
New York Journal-American (11 November 1955)
“Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.”
"Alas! Deceived", p. 367 (1993).
Writing Home (1994)
Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
" Hands All Round http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/tiresias/handsallround.html", l. 1-4 (1885)
Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)
“Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)
Linking our England to his Italy.”
Book XII: The Book and the Ring, line 873.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
Thomas Nashe, Preface to Robert Greene's Menaphon (1589), cited from G. Gregory Smith (ed.) Elizabethan Critical Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904) vol. 1, p. 315.
Criticism
“For me today, Hull City beat Hull City.”
1-Sep-2008, Guardian website
It was a bit of a one-sided game as Hull lose at home 0-5 to Wigan.
