In 1962, Philip Larkin — librarian, poet, and one of the great voices of twentieth-century English literature — wrote a poem called "Sunny Prestatyn". It appeared in his collection The Whitsun Weddings (1964), became one of his most widely studied poems, and gave this small North Wales resort a literary reputation that no amount of tourist board marketing could have generated. For a less poetic assessment of the town today, see The Honest Guide.
The Poem
The poem describes a railway station poster advertising Prestatyn as a holiday destination, showing a smiling young woman, golden sand, and the promise of the British seaside at its most appealing. Over subsequent weeks the poet observes the poster being progressively defaced — first crude graffiti, then more systematic destruction — until the smiling woman has been replaced with something considerably less wholesome. The final version of the poster features a cancer poster.
It is a poem about the gap between the advertised ideal and the experienced reality, about what a certain kind of male frustration does when it encounters images of aspiration it cannot possess, and about the British seaside as a site of promised pleasure that rarely delivers what it promises. It does all of this in 24 lines, with Larkin's characteristic combination of flat observation and sudden emotional depth.
What It Means for Prestatyn
Larkin was not from Prestatyn — he was a Hull man, and the poem is about the gap between the idea of a place and the place itself rather than about Prestatyn specifically. The resort appears in the poem because its name appeared on a poster, not because Larkin had a particular relationship with the town. "Sunny Prestatyn" was genuine 1950s and 60s promotional language — the town was, and still is, marketed on the back of its reputation for sunshine relative to wetter parts of Wales.
The irony of Prestatyn's most famous cultural connection being a poem partly about the destruction of promotional imagery about Prestatyn is not lost on anyone who thinks about it. The town is now primarily known to students of English literature, which is a strange kind of fame but not an entirely unwelcome one.
Larkin's North Wales
Philip Larkin did visit North Wales. He spent time in Llandudno, and his letters mention the North Wales coast with a mixture of affection and the bleak humour he applied to everything. "Sunny Prestatyn" reflects a genuine familiarity with the promotional culture of British seaside tourism in the postwar period — the posters, the cheerful unreality of resort advertising, the gap between the promise and the coast in November.
The Poem in Context
The Whitsun Weddings (1964) is widely considered Larkin's finest collection and one of the most important volumes of English poetry published in the second half of the twentieth century. "Sunny Prestatyn" appears alongside "The Whitsun Weddings", "Ambulances", "Dockery and Son", and "An Arundel Tomb" — poems that remain on English Literature A-level syllabuses decades after their first publication. Prestatyn is the only North Wales town to feature as a title in the collection.
For visitors with a literary bent, Prestatyn offers the slightly unusual pleasure of being in the physical location of a famous poem while knowing that the poem is less about the place than about the poster of the place. The beach, the promenade, the sand: these are all here and largely as described. The smiling girl on the poster is not.
Further information: the Philip Larkin Society is the authoritative source on his life and work.