LARKIN (PHILIP, 1922-1985, poet and librarian) AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF HIS POEM 'HOW TO WIN THE NEXT ELECTION (TUNE: LILLIBULERO'), comprising ten lines including choruses, and beginning: "Prison for strikers,/ Bring back the cat..." and ending "...Lock up the Commies, -- / God save the Queen!/ (Cho[rus]: Commies, commies, etc.)", 1 page, folio, filing holes [1970]

In his biography of Larkin, Andrew Motion cites this poem as evidence of Larkin's increasingly right- wing views in politics and states that it was sent to Robert Conquest.

Of Harold Wilson's Labour government he had written to Kingsley Amis in 1969: "the decimal-loving, nigger-mad, army-cutting, abortion-promoting, murderer-pardoning, daylight-hating ponces, to hell with them, the worst government I can remember" (pp. 409-410)

Autograph poetical manuscripts by Larkin rarely appear for sale.

£850