Exit the hero

It was in The Spectator, in 1954, that the Movement was christened, and its members’ stereotyped image was soon set: white, male (except for Elizabeth Jennings), non-posh poets who rhymed and scanned, hated Abroad, thought T. S. Eliot was arse, Didn’t Come From London, and disconcerted the students at the redbrick universities where they taught by wearing flat caps and scarves in lectures.

Kingsley Amis cast them as a jazz ensemble:

Jack Wain and the Provincial All-Stars

Wain (tpt, voc) directing Phil Larkin (clt), ‘King’ Amis (tmb), Don Davie (alto), Al Alvarez (pno), Tommy Gunn (gtr), George (‘Pops’) Fraser (bs), Wally Robson (ds)

It was at the time a highly effective publicity stunt, but for years afterwards most members of the Movement sensibly denied having anything to do with it in the first place. As one of the fiercest deniers, Thom Gunn, put it in a poem about something else: ‘Their relationship consisted/ In discussing if it existed.’