To be fair, lots of perfectly sensible and good things are going to happen: there will be lectures by Andrew Motion, his biographer, and Anthony Thwaite, the editor of his letters, and Tom Courtenay has already performed his acclaimed one-man show about Larkin to help raise money for the statue of the poet that will be unveiled in December at Hull's Paragon station, the starting point for the poet's train journey in The Whitsun Weddings. Larkin25 is a determinedly jolly, unironic affair, and the poet it love bombs so enthusiastically would have hated it. If the organisers know how apt it is to be marking the anniversary of a death rather than a birth – unlike most of us, Larkin didn't start with the death-fear at 40 it clammily took hold of him when he was still in his 20s – they are not letting on. Larkin25 is a 25-week-long celebration of the poet Philip Larkin's life and work, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of his death.

In Hull, though, a different kind of festival is beginning. M ost eyes, right now, are on the festival of football that is the World Cup.

The Less Deceived by Philip Larkin