Larkin’s Jazz: Essays and Reviews, 1940-1984

Poet Philip Larkin’s reputation as a writer on jazz has so far hinged almost exclusively on All What Jazz, which collects the 126 record-review columns he wrote for the Daily Telegraph from 1961 to 1971. However, he wrote frequently and elsewhere on jazz-for the Observer, Guardian, New Statesman and such journals as American Scholar. In bringing all these pieces together, Larkin’s Jazz is not only a valuable addition to Larkin scholarship but an illuminating corrective to all those who regard him as a jazz reactionary. Larkin once wrote that “a critic is only as good as his ear;” Larkin’s Jazz offers decisive evidence of just how durable and penetrating his judgments have proven to be.