George Szirtes remembers Martin Bell, whom he met as a student, and his ‘Collected Poems’ that glitter with laughter and ...

Philip Larkin is speaking, and intellectual England turns to listen. For if Larkin is not a great poet, he is nevertheless the only British poet who still seems able to compose great poems.

The man being referred to is likely Philip Larkin, a real poet who it's implied the Doctor has met in person at some point. The quote, "What survives of us is love," is a fitting encapsulation of ...

Poetry, like most art, is subjective, and people’s tastes run as wide as the collections on offer. Whether young or old, well ...

but the profound clarity of his poems showed me a… Larkin argues that those who don’t fear death are deluding themselves, but as I age I realise that he misses… He had a gift for wisecracks, but the ...

Across ten programmes and ten Philip Larkin poems, Simon Armitage, the poet laureate, finds out what happens when he revisits and unpicks Larkin's work in his centenary year. Show more Across ten ...

This story appears in the April 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine. If I were called in / To construct a religion / I should make use of water, wrote the English poet Philip Larkin in 1954 ...