Quotes about Philip Larkin

4 Sourced Quotes

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.

It's unthinkable not to love — you'd have a severe nervous breakdown. Or you'd have to be Philip Larkin.

Lawrence Durrell

To Philip Larkin who had complained that he could not think of a rhyme for Stoke Poges:

An incontinent man from Stoke Poges
At the theatre would often soak loges.
To take care of that
He'd pee in his hat
Or a chamber pot made in Limoges.

Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet

Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life. Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.