Going, Going

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

Episode seven:

Simon Armitage explores Philip Larkin's poem 'Going, Going', which invokes an England the poet fears will soon disappear ('The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,/The guildhalls, the carved choirs.) Does this poem's tone and language still resonate with us today? Can 'Going, Going' be seen as an eco-poem?