To the Sea

Across ten programmes and ten poems, Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate, finds out what happens when he revisits Philip Larkin's work in his centenary year.

Episode 6:
Simon Armitage explores Philip Larkin's poem 'To the Sea', a poem which describes how everything 'crowds under the low horizon' at the beach in high summer.

Larkin wrote once that holidays stemmed from 'a romantic notion that it will all be better at Frinton or Venice', but this is one of his most celebratory poems. Does 'To the Sea' still speak to us today?

Producer: Faith Lawrence
Mixed by: Sue Stonestreet