Philip larkin

Extremes of passion: What Will Survive of Us, by Howard Jacobson, reviewed

10 February 2024 9:00 am

On first meeting, Sam and Lily both suffer a coup de foudre and embark on an affair involving submission and sado-masochism. But where will it lead?

Too many tales of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle

7 October 2023 9:00 am

Contemplating ‘hedgehog philosophy’ with Sarah Sands, Rowan Williams, Greta Thunberg and other luminaries would test anyone’s patience after 150 pages

Andrew Motion pays tribute to his poetic mentors

20 May 2023 9:00 am

In a second memoir, Motion focuses on how he became a poet, and his search for father figures, including W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin

The intense Englishness of Philip Larkin

3 July 2022 6:00 pm

The English language has a curious feature, called the phrasal verb. It consists of a plain verb plus a preposition;…

Hell is an English train journey

9 April 2022 9:00 am

Delayed, on Southern Rail Home From the Hill is a 1987 documentary by Molly Dineen about Hilary Hook, an elderly…

Letters: We’re all still paying for the financial crash

26 March 2022 9:00 am

Don’t blame the banks? Sir: Kate Andrews struggles to disentangle the causes of the developing cost-of-living crisis (‘Cold truth’, 19…

This be the curse: Philip Larkin’s big problem

12 March 2022 9:00 am

Philip Larkin’s big problem

We Lumas have the weight of the world on our shoulders

8 May 2021 9:00 am

In the introduction to an anthology of his jazz record reviews, the poet Philip Larkin imagines his readers. They’re not…

My clairvoyant GP

1 May 2021 9:00 am

‘Willie or bum?’ I said to Catriona on the motorway. Everything in my recent medical career has been introduced via…

An unsuitable attachment to Nazism: Barbara Pym in the 1930s

17 April 2021 9:00 am

Vicars, tea parties and village fetes were a far cry from Barbara Pym’s early enthusiasms, Philip Hensher reveals

A lesson in survival from pre-21st century Marks & Spencer

18 April 2020 9:00 am

When I wrote last week about business-to-business pain-sharing for survival, I was naturally thinking first about UK companies. I say…

The touching traces of the past in church visitors’ books

15 June 2019 9:00 am

I am memorialised twice in my village church. Not in some premature lapidary way, but in the visitors’ book. The…

The upsides of dementia: Forgetfulness can be a blessing

1 June 2019 9:00 am

My 91-year-old father-in-law has always had a terror of hospitals. This dates from his time as a Royal Marine when,…

How Philip Larkin f****d me up

20 April 2019 9:00 am

I first came across Philip Larkin’s poem ‘This Be the Verse’ when I was 18 in the late 1970s. You…

A biographer’s tale: beware of meeting your literary heroes

1 December 2018 9:00 am

Germaine Greer described biographers as ‘vultures’. I prefer to think of myself as a version of Philip Marlowe or Sam…

John Ruskin as a boy, seated beside his mother, listening to the sermon

Every day is mother’s day for writers: most have strong feelings about their mothers, though not always of love

10 March 2018 9:00 am

You attempt to write a review with a stiff dose of objectivity, but it’s hard not to start with a…

‘Nympheas (Waterlilies)’, 1914–15, by Claude Monet

The link between herbaceous borders and the avant-garde

30 January 2016 9:00 am

Philip Larkin once remarked that Art Tatum, a jazz musician given to ornate, multi-noted flourishes on the keyboard, reminded him…

Shock and awe in Coventry, 14 November 1940

21 November 2015 9:00 am

On 14 November 1940, at seven in the evening, the Luftwaffe began to bomb Coventry. The skyline turned red like…

Beatles mania! (Photo: Getty)

The best of British — from Agatha Christie to the YBAs

26 September 2015 8:00 am

Is it true that, having lost an empire, we reinvented ourselves as an island of entertainers? Do we channel the…

Barbara Pym: a woman scorned

23 May 2015 9:00 am

Anyone who has ever listened to the thump of a rejected manuscript descending cheerlessly on to the mat can take…

Who needs drugs when you have Radio 3?

30 August 2014 9:00 am

I’m willing to bet it’s only on the BBC’s Radio 3 that you’ll find yourself listening to a programme quite…

Why can’t country views be protected from wind turbines?

12 April 2014 9:00 am

City skylines are protected from careless building. Why should country views be different?