19 JULY 2003, Page 25

Adapting Larkin

From Mr Geoff Weston Sir: Simon Hoggart, in his review of Love and Death in Hull (Television, 12 July), describes as the best line in the film Larkin's remark 'Depression is to me what daffodils were to Wordsworth.'

Unfortunately for Mr Hoggart and the central thesis of the Channel 4 documentary, this is a misquotation; the word Larkin used was 'deprivation' not 'depression' (see his interview with Miriam Gross in the Observer, 16 December 1979).

Geoff Weston

Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull