Philip Larkin, the Poet Laureate who never was

We’ll never know if Philip Larkin, one of the greatest English poets of the twentieth century, would have been a success as Poet Laureate. Larkin, as well as several other poets like WH Auden and Robert Graves, was deemed unsuitable for the role by Downing Street, according to documents released today by the National Archives. No. 10 was warned that Larkin disliked public speaking and that he was a ‘reserved’ man who would not be an ambassador for poetry.

While there is no doubt of Larkin’s talent, this is no guarantee that he would have succeeded as Laureate. Twenty men and one woman have been appointed Poet Laureate. Probably only three of those have been a complete success. The poet has to be able to take on public subjects, and not just produce intimate inward lyrics. The style has to be accessible to a wide readership, even to have a quality of the tub-thumping – William Blake and Geoffrey Hill wrote magnificently on national themes but would have been too cryptic.