Towards the end of his life, in the years after High Windows, Larkin famously dried up. Poems came seldom. Some of those that did come equalled his best, and ‘Aubade’ was among his greatest. Larkin thought highly enough of it himself to send it out in pamphlet form to his friends and acquaintances, and they were quickly on the telephone to one another quoting phrases and lines from it. Soon it was stanzas, and in London there is at least one illustrious playwright who won’t go home from a dinner party before he has found an excuse to recite the whole thing.