W. H. Auden
&
Cumbria

On the 100th anniversary of his birth a lot of tosh is being talked about Auden as a poet of Cumbria. Auden couldn't have inhabited his ideal landscape, however nurturing he found the idea of it.

Everything about him was urban. He wanted opera, libraries, restaurants, rent boys --- all the appurtenances of civilization. You don't find them in Penrith.

--- Alan Bennett
"What I Didn't Do in 2007"
London Review of Books
3 January 2008