Larkin wrote that his mower had 'stalled, twice' and that he found 'A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, / Killed.’

It’s a seriously pathetic mower that would be jammed by a hedgehog.

We tend to underestimate the progress we managed to make in the last 100 years or so. There was a small TV segment showing the earliest vacuum cleaners. Both vacuum and cleaning looks like wishful thinking compared to what we have today.

Heck, the rechargeable vacuum I have at home has more power than what I used to the one I plugged to the wall ~20 years ago. Reducing the cost of CFD via higher performance computers did wonders in efficient system design, and that's just one aspect of life.

We have 1.5L Turbo / Hybrid engines which can propel the vehicle quicker than a run of the mill V6 of yore, too, and I find this amazing.

I always wanted to have a bigger engine because of the agility in emergency conditions. Now the bog standard car has more agility than I even dreamed of.

I suspect that a 1970s mower for UK garden use was typically not very beefy. Wikipedia thinks Larkin had some kind of Victa.