Peter Parker

‘That little venal borough’: a poet’s jaundiced view of Aldeburgh

George Crabbe was the first to put the Suffolk town on the map – but not in a good way, says Frances Gibb

Engraving of the poet George Crabbe by James Thomson, after a painting by Henry William Pickersgill. [Getty Images] 
issue 25 June 2022
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  • A Time and a Place: George Crabbe, Aldeburgh and Suffolk

    Frances Gibb

    Lutterworth, pp. 192, £17

‘To talk about Crabbe is to talk about England,’ E.M. Forster declared in a radio broadcast in May 1941, but few people today talk about this Suffolk-born poet or indeed read him. This makes Frances Gibb’s slender but thorough account of George Crabbe’s life and work all the more welcome.

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