MCMXIV: a Poem by Philip Larkin

A look at England prior to the outbreak of World War One

Philip Larkin (1922–85) is widely regarded as being one of the greatest poets writing in English in the late 20th century. He seemed to be a man for his time, in that he expressed in his poems many of the thoughts and feelings that were typical of welfare-state post-imperial Britain. This included uncertainty, self-doubt and a mixture of pessimism and hope as the public mood swung from one to the other and back again.

Larkin’s outlook was essentially conservative, which is possibly one reason why he was suggested as a suitable successor to Sir John Betjeman on the latter’s death in 1984 (Larkin turned down the offer, for various reasons). Larkin admired Betjeman’s work, much of which was very nostalgic and looked back with longing to an England that was more ordered and secure than that of the 1960s and 1970s. Larkin’s 1960 poem “MCMXIV” (published in “The Whitsun Weddings”, 1964) seems to be in this tradition, and could almost have been written by Betjeman himself.

The title (1914 in Roman numerals) is itself a throwback, given that such numerals are rarely seen today apart from on the credits for TV programmes. In introducing his own recorded reading of “The Whitsun Weddings”, Larkin commented that “the emotional impact of nineteen-fourteen in…