Towards the end of the last century, I was studying for a degree in English literature. I went off to university with a love of fiction; I finished up mainly hating it, worn down by the sheer volume of stuff to be read and analysed. Why analyse anyway? I never really got that. Either you enjoy it or you don’t.

Poetry was mainly a mystery too. The one advantage of this was that when a line or two did come into focus, it moved me beyond measure. One such moment has stayed with me. The poem was “The Whitsun Weddings” by Philip Larkin. The writer is looking out of the window of a train from Hull to London, sharing the carriage with several newlyweds who’ve boarded along the way:

They watched the landscape, sitting side
   by side
– An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl – and
   none
Thought of the others they would never
   meet
Or how their lives would all contain this
   hour.