Roger Lewis followed in the poet’s footsteps – and was enchanted by the Milan of Yorkshire
Find the notion of Hull as European City of Culture quite hard to take,’ wrote Alan Bennett in his latest diary, of the accolade proposed for 2017. Indeed, everyone is routinely beastly about Hull, hostile and condescending. ‘Back to this dreary dump, East Riding’s dirty dump,’ Philip Larkin reported to Monica Jones. ‘What a place to be, how it depresses me.’ He nevertheless managed to live there for 30 years. When he griped to Auden about Hull being at least as good a place as any other in which to be unhappy, the elder poet wagged a finger in admonishment and said, ‘Naughty, naughty!’ Christopher Hitchens called the ‘rugged coastal city’ second only to Belfast for misery and forbiddingness. He characterised Hull as a place of tasteless food, watery drinks, outrageous plumbing and ‘dreary and crowded lodgings’. Martin Amis was equally as disparaging. In his putdown of Larkin – Kingsley’s...
I’m afraid this isn’t one of our four free articles available in full, which are set out in the first two rows of the ‘Magazine’ page.
Please click here to find them.
To buy a digital version of this issue for just £2.99, click here
