Do poets need monuments? Not according to Horace, writing in the first century BC, who considered his poems to be “a monument more lasting than bronze/And loftier than the pyramids of kings”. Ben Jonson took a similar line when others were campaigning for Shakespeare to be given a place in Westminster Abbey: why bother? “Thou art a Moniment without a tombe” he wrote, “And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live.” Over the centuries, Poets’ Corner has become a national institution nonetheless. There’s no greater posthumous honour for a writer. And now Philip Larkin is taking his place there.
His memorial stone sits between those of Anthony Trollope and Ted Hughes, with the tomb of Chaucer behind. Would he have approved? Not every poet leaps at the chance to be commemorated. Alexander Pope wrote an epitaph for himself as “one who would not be buried in Westminster Abbey”, preferring a grave near his mother’s, in Twickenham.
Related: Philip Larkin memorial to join literary greats in Westminster Abbey
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