Sir, Philip Larkin’s ambivalence about the last line of his An Arundel Tomb (“What will survive of us is love”) is even greater than Philip Allison suggests (letter, Sept 4). Andrew Motion’s biography tells us that, at the end of his manuscript draft, he wrote: “Love isn’t stronger than death just because statues hold hands for 600 years”. Yet I thought his line true enough to include it on a plaque in memory of my wife and son in our local garden of rest.
Richard Oerton
Cannington, Somerset