In letter to colleague, poet wrote that he dreaded post’s ‘sherry-drill with important people’ and that he would be ‘entirely unfitted’ for the job
A vision of the “hell on earth” that is a literary party and revulsion for “a lot of sherry-drill with important people” drove Philip Larkin to rule himself out of consideration as the Oxford professor of poetry, according to an unpublished letter recently discovered in a college safe.
As Oxford graduates prepare to vote for the next incumbent this June, with a spat breaking out over Wole Soyinka’s suitability for the post, the archivist at St Hugh’s College in Oxford has stumbled across a letter from Larkin declining a nomination.
The letter, typed on Larkin’s letterhead at the University of Hull’s Brynmor Jones library, replies to a suggestion from the college’s then-principal, Rachel Trickett, that he should stand for the prestigious role. Larkin receives Trickett’s letter on 8 October 1968, and after “the luxury of a few minutes day-dreaming on the subject”, writes to dissuade her from putting his name forward
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As Oxford graduates prepare to vote for the next incumbent this June, with a spat breaking out over Wole Soyinka’s suitability for the post, the archivist at St Hugh’s College in Oxford has stumbled across a letter from Larkin declining a nomination.
The letter, typed on Larkin’s letterhead at the University of Hull’s Brynmor Jones library, replies to a suggestion from the college’s then-principal, Rachel Trickett, that he should stand for the prestigious role. Larkin receives Trickett’s letter on 8 October 1968, and after “the luxury of a few minutes day-dreaming on the subject”, writes to dissuade her from putting his name forward
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