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Letter: Poet justice

Poet justice

Sir: Your correspondent Roy Watkins (letters, 30 November), in the course of chiding teachers for their ignorance of grammar, mangles and misapplies his quotation from Philip Larkin's Church Going. When Larkin wrote that "someone will forever be surprising/A hunger in himself to be more serious", he was thinking of more important matters than the ability to recognise modal verbs.

DAVID REED

Bristol

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