An odd couple

When the poems of Philip Larkin came to the fore in the late Fifties, I admired his graceful colloquialism but was dismayed by his almost proselytising gloom; life wasn’t given much of a chance. So I decided that he was a great Comic poet — stretching the idea of Comedy to almost Renaissance widths and depths — that he was the Les Dawson of the anthologies. This wasn’t good enough as a formula, it left too much out; but it was a way of admiring while keeping at a distance.

When, three decades later, Westminster Abbey was found crammed to the walls for his memorial service, it was clear that his willed vacancies —– ‘the life with the hole in it’ — had been welcomed into the hearts and minds of a great many; for them he had told them how it is.

Richard Bradford’s account of his life and work, at least for seven-eighths of its length, suggests that the idea of Larkin the comedian is not far from the mark.