Now We Know Where That Beatles Reference Came From

As it turns out, the famously curmudgeonly, pop-music-hating, child-abhorring Philip Larkin spent some time with a fellow-poet's family in 1964, playing with their children when they were listening to the stereo and even writing a Beatles-type song for them: "Don't like your song/ It gets me down./ It's much too long,/ It makes me frown./ Can't think why this God-awful noise/ Makes daughters miss their dates with boys." The mind boggles.