In Exiles and Emigrés (1970) Terry Eagleton argued that modern British culture had proved incapable of producing a major writer who could analyse society as a whole. It had collapsed into a 'withered empiricism'. And English poetry in this century has seemed to many to confirm this analysis, the dominant voice being one of cautious 'common sense' tinged with a wistful conservatism:

                            an immense load
Of self-neutralising moral and social qualities,
Above all, Circumspection.

LRB 23 October 1986 | PDF Download