Did Philip Larkin, who is to be honoured with a memorial in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner, have an enlightening moment at the end of his life?While the non-believing poet could hardly be said to have a deathbed “conversion” in the manner of Lord Marchmain in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, we can report that Larkin had a Catholic priest present as he was dying in 1985. That was Fr Anthony Storey, the much-loved chaplain of Hull University, who had invited Larkin, the university’s librarian, to talk about jazz on a couple of occasions at the chaplaincy. The priest also knew Maeve Brennan, a Catholic, who was a colleague and a close friend of the poet. As Larkin was dying, Fr Storey took to dropping in and on one occasion he sat quiet
18 June 2015, The Tablet
Larkin’s last rites
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