The City of Hull has just begun ‘Larkin 25′, a 25-week-long event, marking the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death on 2nd December 1985. BBC Radio 4′s ‘Front Row’ hosted by Mark Lawson, plugged the event, but spent at least half its time promoting the charges that Larkin was:
a/ a misogynist;
b/ a racist;
c/ a Nazi sympathiser.
No-one on the programme challenged these claims and even the suggestion (from one of the organisers of the Hull event) that we should separate the man from his work, came over as tacit acceptance that the allegations are true.
Pretty par for the Front Row course. Shiraz Socialist takes issue with the evidence presented in the one-dimensional BBC view.
c/ a Nazi sympathiser.
If true, then Larkin would have got on like a house on fire with Lawson’s pal, the Jew hating scumbag Tom Paulin.
Disgrace. Absolute disgrace, and it’s people like Lawson that make me ashamed to say I’m wanting to pursue a career in journalism. I’m an avid student of poetry and Larkin’s work is fantastic, and lazy character assasination by people who barely knew the man personally is disgusting. Especially at an event that is supposed to CELEBRATE his work, not lazily shoot him down.
The vuvuzela liberals at the BBC probably can’t stomach the way Larkin skewered their brand of liberal-academic condescension. He even managed to include the Third Programme in his contempt (“The mirror of the Third”).
As in:
Hurrying to catch my Comet
One dark November day,
Which soon would snatch me from it
To the sunshine of Bombay,
I pondered pages Berkely
Not three weeks since had heard
Perceiiving Chatto darkly
Through the mirror of the Third.
Crowds, colourless and careworn,
Had made my taxi late
Yet not till I was airborne
Did I recall the date –
That day when Queen and Minister
And Bands of Guards and all
Still act their solemn-sinister
Wreath-rubbish in Whitehall.
It used to make me throw up,
These mawkish nursery games:
Oh when will England grow up?
– But I outsoar the Thames
And dwindle off down Auster
To greet Professor Lal
(He once met Morgan Foster)
My contact and my pal.
Forget the racism and the sexism charges, it’s his attack on gliberalism that the Beeboids can’t stand.
The vuvuzela liberals
Ha. That’s funny.
Vuvuzela lieberal — an mindless drone that drowns out all rational thought.
Maybe Aunty could organise a book burning?
Useful to ‘own’ (in all senses of the word, perhaps bar the actually paying for it bit) the most dominant media outlet in the country when you need to play up those you like and denigrate those who don’t follow the party line.
There is a word for that…