Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Letters

This be the verse for the Queen’s jubilee: Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth
On 6 February the Queen became the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee. Photograph: Reuters

The Queen’s reign was already being marked as extraordinarily enduring 45 years ago (Report, 4 February). Around the time of the silver jubilee, Charles Monteith, the editor at Faber & Faber of many great authors between the 1950s and 1970s, asked Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes to produce short poems to commemorate the occasion. They were to be inscribed in stone and placed in Queen’s Square, London, near the Faber offices. Larkin submitted:

In times when nothing stood
But worsened, or grew strange,
There was one constant good:
She did not change.

Revealing, perhaps, as much his ambivalent feelings about Hughes as any he had about the monarchy, Larkin included a pastiche of what he imagined Hughes would write:

The sky split apart in malice
Stars rattled like pans on a shelf
Crow shat on Buckingham Palace
God pissed himself –

Hughes, a committed monarchist and soon to be poet laureate, actually produced something more reverential, if less striking, and both official contributions may be seen on a flower bowl and surrounds in Queen’s Square.
David Evans
Exeter

Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.