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World

Philip Larkin, the Poet Laureate who never was

20 July 2023

12:43 AM

20 July 2023

12:43 AM

We’ll never know if Philip Larkin, one of the greatest English poets of the twentieth century, would have been a success as Poet Laureate. Larkin, as well as several other poets like WH Auden and Robert Graves, was deemed unsuitable for the role by Downing Street, according to documents released today by the National Archives.

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