Found a list on a New York Times blog of the best British writers since 1945 (or some such date). I was frankly surprised to see Philip Larkin at the top of the list. I’ve long loved him, and his peers, in what I think of as a generation of plain-spoken British poets, Auden, Heaney, Larkin.

One of my favorite Larkin passages reminds me very vividly of being a child and being dragged by my father to ADC (another damned cathedral). As much as Hilary and I whined about being taken to church upon church, when I was inside them, I was always moved. The tall windows of stained glass, and the light streaming in, and the hush filled with life.

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.