Prompted by your cryptic crossword marking the centenary of Philip Larkin’s birth (9 August) to look out my copy of his collection High Windows, I was intrigued by the note, on the page following the contents, explaining that the poem Going, Going was commissioned by the Department of the Environment.
As the poem was published in 1972, it was presumably Edward Heath’s Conservative government that commissioned it. The poem laments the way that England’s natural environment is treated for commercial gain: “Chuck filth in the sea … On the Business Page, a score / Of spectacled grins approve / Some takeover bid that entails / Five per cent profit (and ten / Per cent more in the estuaries) … First slum of Europe: a role / it won’t be hard to win, / With a cast of crooks and tarts. / And that will be England gone…”
The current Conservative government, and environment department, would do well to have a read of the poem, as it is remarkably relevant today.
Helen Taylor
Amulree, Perth and Kinross
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