Showing posts with label Philip Larkin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philip Larkin. Show all posts

Philip Larkin, the Impossible Man

April 12, 2011

How the most exasperating of poets met his match
By Christopher Hitchens

"IN MAY 1941, Philip Larkin was the treasurer of the Oxford University English Club and in that capacity had to take the visiting speaker George Orwell out to dinner after he had addressed the membership on the subject of “Literature and Totalitarianism.” Larkin’s main recollection: “We took Dylan Thomas to the Randolph and George Orwell to the not-so-good hotel. I suppose it was my first essay in practical criticism."

Read More (The Atlantic)

 
 
 

Christopher reads from Hitch-22: A Memoir