Four men, Cromwell thinks, "who for a joke turned the cardinal into a beast; who took away his wit, his kindness and his grace, and made him a howling animal, grovelling on the boards and scrabbling with his paws".
By the late '50s Ginsberg had endured his mother's final institutionalization and ugly death, his own emotional sinkholes, a confounding series of sexual experiments and love affairs, the highs and lows of Greenwich Village and Paris bohemia, and the double-edged triumph of "Howl," which made him both the most famous and most notorious poet in Eisenhower-era America.
He settled in San Francisco because of its "tradition of Bohemia" and wrote "Howl", the poem that made him famous.Just as an earlier generation first heard of "Ulysses" when it was banned, "Howl" became famous by being prosecuted for obscenity.
At one Brussels dinner, Charlemagne heard MEPs howling "make him stop", when a British Conservative ventured to suggest that the single currency might fall apart.Funnily enough, Eurosceptics and federalists are often the parliament's clearest-eyed analysts.
He promised to "make Georgia howl," and he did.
He wrote, "The poor women will make a howl.
It was a moment to make Sarah Palin howl.
"The hokey special effects and the over-the-top performances make me howl with laughter.
"If you step out of line I will make you howl for your mother".
Straight afterwards, I flipped over to Radio 4 and Moral Maze, a programme that can make me howl or hurl.
