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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Larkin's Trousers, a Mystery

















No amount of vacuous allegations about the ‘human rights’ of the bunch of Oxford-educated Korean seven-year-olds locked in a lightless basement somewhere producing the stuff can detract from the capacity of Philip Larkin’s posthumous works to amuse and enthral. No doubt a tie-in with an equally posthumous Inspector Morse mystery prevented further elaboration, but this snippet from today’s Guardian on the mystery of Larkin’s trousers in the bard’s unpublished letters, serves to whet even the most jaded of appetites (never!) once again for more (and more and more):

Some of the letters in the new collection have been seen before. The poet’s biographer, Andrew Motion, acquired a few from Larkin's sister, Kitty. Motion says Eva Larkin wrote to her son in a “similarly doting, similarly trivial” tone to his own letters. “Of course you ought not to have changed those pants,” she chides in one. “Remember that I thought it very unwise at the time.”

Read more here.

1 comment:

sean lysaght said...

They might yet turn up in a Rick Gekoski catalogue. Keep an eye. The same dealer once sold a gown of Tolkien's in a list otherwise devoted to books.