Across ten programmes and ten Philip Larkin poems, Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate, finds out what happens when he revisits and unpicks Larkin's work in his centenary year.

Episode four:
Simon Armitage explores Philip Larkin's poem Toads Revisited.

Larkin's image of the toad as a metaphor for the burden of work appears in his poem Toads - but in Toads Revisited the 'toad work' becomes a kind of crutch, helping the poet 'down Cemetery Road'. Does the image of the 'toad' still work for us today, as Larkin intended?

Producer: Faith Lawrence
Mixed by: Sue Stonestreet Show less