Elisabeth Mahoney 

Radio review: David Walliams on Philip Larkin

There was high praise for Larkin's clarity and intensity of emotion in this unhurried gem of a programme, writes Elisabeth Mahoney
  
  

Philip Larkin
'Very interesting about fusspottery' … Philip Larkin. Photograph: ¬© UPPA Ltd. Photograph: ¬© UPPA Ltd.

David Walliams on Philip Larkin (Radio 4) was a gentle, unhurried thing. Walliams spoke about his love of Larkin's poetry and the place it has in his life. That's not to be understated.

"I keep a copy of his selected poems by my bed," he explained, "and always travel with it." It's there for him, he added, "if I'm lying awake at night, fearing death" or "feeling old and neglectful". When wooing his wife, he read her Larkin poems, too, and his best man read one at their wedding.

What Walliams seemed to value was an intensity of emotion in the writing, but also its clarity. At school, he remembered, you had to "decode" great writers, "making little notes in the margins like 'classical allusion' and 'literary reference', but you rarely have to do that with Larkin's work".

He discussed the work with Andrew Motion, the two of them concurring on almost everything, except Walliams's comparison of Larkin and Morrissey ("there seems to be a connection"), which left Motion behind a bit.

Motion had his own interpretative terminology ("a very interesting poem about fusspottery") and expressions, though. To suggest that Larkin wasn't the most wildly affirmative and enthusiastic soul, he said: "He's not the man from Del Monte." Walliams paused for a second to relish that notion, then quietly replied: "No."

 

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