The poet and life writer has been dwelling on the loss of his sister.

“Scratch an Englishman and you’ll find an anti-Catholic,” my father used to say. A prime ­example might have been Arthur Morrison, father of the poet and memoirist Blake Morrison, or Arthur’s father, Ernest, who locked himself into the bathroom and threatened to open his wrists with a razor if Arthur married his Catholic sweetheart – Blake’s mother-to-be – Agnes O’Shea.

“It was a Middle England prejudice against Catholics,” says Blake, who has a twinkle in his eye even when dwelling on (often literally) grave matters, as he tends to. “But it was also a prejudice against the Irish. So, as an Irish Catholic, my mother” – the nineteenth of 20 children from Killorglin, Co. Kerry – “was doubly condemned.”

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