Philip Larkin
How gown destroyed town
The decline and fall of the dreaming spires and their replacement by shuttered shops, sad cafés and mothballed pubs
Philip Larkin: the man who was always right
The great man’s peerless poetry is not the “soppy stuff” of cheap romanticism, but a harsh, unsparing — and often beautiful — look at the world
Why do we like Larkin so much?
On a love with limits
Amis at 100: a master satirist without honour
It’s time to appreciate Kingsley Amis — flaws and all
Should we take Kingsley Amis more seriously as a poet?
The acclaimed novelist harboured dreams of writing verse
The joys and misery of Monica
This is not only an objective biography by a distinguished academic, it is also a warm personal memoir
Like father, like son
Philip Larkin’s long association with Kingsley and Martin Amis resulted in the poet being misrepresented and misunderstood
Why hasn’t Philip Larkin been cancelled?
When Larkin is inevitably denounced, I’ll be reading his forbidden work by torchlight
Sharing the pleasure in poetry
James Booth reviews ‘Somewhere Becoming Rain: Collected Writings on Philip Larkin’
Smartphones are not the source of all social ills
Phones and social media are easy scapegoats for our all too human follies
The problem with puberty blockers
Ministers must step in to prevent the NHS from experimenting on children
The Midas touch
The kind of skill that makes the breath catch in thousands of throats at once
Dumb, glum and zero-sum
British thinking has to value supply more than distribution
Why do we mourn the unborn?
Our attitudes towards children in the womb are hopelessly confused
Pen pusher
My fascination with fountain pens
Parklife people
This book has a brilliant premise but, frustratingly, it doesn’t quite work
Britons need real ownership, not feudal leaseholds
We should shake up an outdated and restrictive system that offers a simulation of property ownership
The greats’ Dane
The story of Burton and Gielgud’s famed Broadway production of Hamlet has been turned into a West End play
Should there be set texts for MPs?
Establishment ignorance of the texts we should be governed by is endangering the United Kingdom
They like her when she’s angry
Kemi Badenoch is the Incredible Hulk of government ministers, roaring her way through the public realm, smashing opponents left and right
