I object to the canonisation of the execrable Philip Larkin, and am appalled to learn that someone intends to pay for a statue of this individual to be erected in Hull. He was a poet; how many poets are commemorated with a statue in Hull?
I am not prejudiced against poets in the collective, in fact I admire many of the craft. But we should take care in our choice of whom we celebrate and raise above the rest.
I remember reading, in a biography of Larkin, a nasty little quatrain he penned for private distribution. It advocated the deportation of non-white immigrants, and, I think, the shooting of trade unionists, certainly some excessive treatment.


"I find the 'state of the nation' quite terrifying. In 10 years’ time we shall all be cowering under our beds as hordes of blacks steal anything they can lay their hands on." Philip Larkin

"We don’t go to Test matches now, too many fucking niggers about." ibid.


"anti-intellectual, racist, sexist, and rotten with class-consciousness." Dr. Germaine Greer on Larkin

Larkin was born in Coventry (or somewhere in the Midlands), the son of a prominent member of the British Union of Fascists. "They fuck you up your mum and dad" is his most famous line of poetry. Maybe he was harking back to his formative years.
Let Coventry commemorate him; or if Hull must be saddled with a statue of this horrible man, locate it in the university grounds out of sight of the people he despised (oh, I'm forgetting, he despised students too).

A friend of mine was a mature student at Hull University when Larkin was head librarian and introduced a new rule. Certain books, usually the most expensive and, apparently some more salacious, were removed from the shelves. The catalogue card for these works was marked with an X to inform the would-be borrower to apply at the issuing desk for a copy. These X-es were written in pencil, so my mate spent every lunchtime pencilling X-es on the books most in demand. He may have been joined by sympathisers in his labours, because the new system soon ground to a halt and the books were returned to the shelves.
People 1, élitist censors 0.