John Betjeman | Poetry Foundation Poetry Foundation 1906–1984 Mark Gerson John Betjeman, poet laureate of the United Kingdom from 1972 until his death in 1984, was known by many as a poet whose writing evoked a sense of nostalgia. He utilized traditional poetic forms, wrote with a light touch about public issues, celebrated classic architecture, and satirized much of contemporary society for his perception of its superficiality. "Modern 'progress' is anathema to him ... ," Jocelyn Brooke wrote in Ronald Firbank and John Betjeman prior to Betjeman's death: "though fortunately for us [he] is still able to laugh." Brooke continued: "Perhaps [Betjeman] can best be described as a writer who uses the medium of light verse for a serious purpose: not merely as a vehicle for satire or social commentary, but as a means of expressing a peculiar and specialized form of aesthetic emotion, in which nostalgia and humour are about equally blended." Betjeman's poetry was considered something of a phenomenon: it was read by a large audience and was also praised by literary critics. As Ralph J.

Mills pointed out in Descant, "Betjeman is a phenomenon in contemporary English literature, a truly popular poet. The sudden fame won by his Collected Poems . . . brought him a wide reputation and made him quickly into a public personality." Betjeman was also admired by such poets and critics as Edmund Wilson and W. H. Auden , who dedicated his own The Age of Anxiety to his fellow poet. "Certainly it is very rare in our day to see much accord between distinguished critics and poets on the one hand and the general public on the other," Mills would add; "but the very complexity of Betjeman's personality and feelings beneath the skillful though apparently simple surface of his verse probably unites, in whatever different kinds of levels of appreciation, the otherwise remote members of his audience." 1958's Collected Poems first brought Betjeman into the popular limelight. Displaying the poet's skillful use of nineteenth-century poetic models, the collection was enthusiastically received by many critics. A Times Literary Supplement reviewer, for example, stated that Betjeman's poems were "a pleasant change from the shapeless and unarticulated matter . . . offered us by so many of his contemporaries.

For Mr. Betjeman is a born versifier, ingenious and endlessly original; his echoes of Tennyson and Crabb, Praed and Father Prout, are never mere pastiche; and he is always attentive to the sound of his words, the run of his lines, the shape of his stanzas." T. J. Ross, however, found that although "his ear is as flawless as Tennyson's and his effects sometimes as remarkable, Betjeman creates a world which, unlike the Victorians', is a miniature." Ross believed that when Betjeman involved the reader completely with his subject "the result [was] poor." Only when he kept the reader at a distance did he bring his work up to the level of "first-rate minor art." But Louise Bogan had high praise for Betjeman's work: "His verse forms, elaborately varied, reproduce an entire set of neglected Victorian techniques, which he manipulates with the utmost dexterity and taste. His diction and his observation are delightfully fresh and original.

And it is a pleasure to let down our defenses and be swept along by his anapaestic lines, with their bouncing unstressed syllables, and to meet no imperfect or false rhymes in the process; to recognize sentiment so delicately shaded, so sincerely felt, that it becomes immediately acceptable even to our modern sensibilities, grown used to the harsh, the violent, and the horrifying." In Summoned by Bells, Betjeman recreates his personal past in richly-detailed poems. Because the poet was able to recreate so accurately the time and place of his own childhood, Mills attributed to Betjeman "an almost Proustian memory." Walter Allen, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called Summoned by Bells an autobiography. But the collection, Allen explained, "can't be judged simply as the equivalent of an autobiographical novel. Whatever the final verdict on it may be, it is an extraordinarily accomplished, sustained exercise in narrative verse." Philip Larkin , in his review of the book for the Spectator, found that, although all the poems in the collection tell the poet's life story, Betjeman "is not an egoist: rather, he is that rare thing, an extrovert sensitive. . .

. [Time] and again in scenes where interest might be expected to focus on the author's feelings we find it instead shifting to the details." Larkin concludes that "Betjeman has an astonishing command of detail, both visual and circumstantial." The poems from both High and Low and A Nip in the Air were included in the fourth edition of Betjeman's Collected Poems. Larkin, writing in his introduction to the volume, explained that Betjeman was a difficult poet for many critics to approach. "Betjeman," he explained, "constitutes a kind of distorting mirror in which all our critical catch-phrases appear in gross unacceptable parody. He is committed, ambiguous, and ironic; he is conscious of literary tradition (but quotes the wrong authors); he is a satirist (but on the wrong side); he has his own White Goddess (in blazer and shorts). And he has done all those things such as forging a personal utterance, creating a private myth, bringing a new language and new properties to poetry, and even . . . giving poetry back to the general reader, all equally undeniably, yet none of them in quite the way we meant.

No wonder our keen critical tools twitch fretfully at his approach." Additional verses, which Betjeman had chosen to omit from previous volumes and which some critics noted were of uneven quality, were collected as Uncollected Poems. This work was published in 1982, two years before the poet's death. While noting in a review of the work for the London Sunday Times that Uncollected Poems contained some "duds," John Carey added that it also included "poems no sensible reader will miss. The best of them touch on dying, that undying Betjeman bug-bear. Whatever his relations with contemporary life, he is unchallengeably the laureate of contemporary death, and has traced, in poem after poem, its horribly normal advance from the preliminary twinge . . . to the fatal X-ray photographs and the hospital bed, conveniently placed for you to hear your relatives, in the car park below, making off cheerily to tea and telly." A sociable man who developed numerous close friendships with a variety of people over the years, Betjeman wrote many letters. His voluminous correspondence was collected in the two-volume Letters, published posthumously beginning in 1994.

Edited by his daughter, Candida Lycett Green, Letters traces the poet's life through two periods: 1926 through 1951, and 1951 through 1984, the year of Betjeman's death. "Somewhere in these two thick volumes," friend and critic Mark Girouard commented in the Times Literary Supplement, "John Betjeman remarks that he wrote letters in order to avoid writing poems. . . . To write letters . . . so that the reading of them brings the writer into the room with one, is a rare gift, but Betjeman certainly had it." In the London Review of Books, Patricia Beer commented on the element of humor that runs throughout the collected Letters. Listing the poet's "apparatus of mirth" as "Oirish imitations, babytalk, spoof signatures, rustic voices, rebus writing, caricatures, doodles and so on," Beer noted that "it too often sounds as though it needed oiling. . . Some will in any case find the jollity very much to their taste.

Those who do not will have many and various sorts of seriousness, even melancholy, to choose from in this protean collection." Besides writing and editing several works on architecture, throughout his life Betjeman remained passionately involved in architectural preservation efforts. As he told Willa Petschek, he was most interested "in saving groups of buildings of towns that can be ruined by 'a single frightful store that looks like a drive-in movie. The only way to prevent more and more ugly buildings going up . . . is to draw people's attention to what's good in all periods.'" Betjeman made numerous appearances on television to promote preservation and became, as Petschek maintained, "a cherished national cult." Betjeman championed such causes in his poetry as well; he wrote lovingly of the places of his childhood, of the buildings and monuments in danger of destruction. "Betjeman's approach to architecture (which he values second only to poetry) enabled him to recognize the 'living force' of 19th-century buildings, especially the Victorian Gothic," Petschek noted.

"Partly through his verse and topographical writings, his guidebooks, poetry readings and TV appearances, but also through his warmth and peculiar genius for imparting enthusiasm for everything from rood screens to ladies' legs, he has made the public accept a rapid reversal in taste." Bibliography Mount Zion; or, In Touch with the Infinite, James Press (London), 1931. Continual Dew: A Little Book of Bourgeois Verse, J. Murray (London), 1937. (Under pseudonym Epsilon) Sir John Piers, Westmeath Examiner (Mullingar, Ireland), 1938. Old Lights for New Chancels: Verses Topographical and Amatory, J. Murray, 1940. New Bats in Old Belfries, J. Murray, 1945. Slick but Not Streamlined: Poems and Short Pieces, selected and with an introduction by W. H. Auden, Doubleday, 1947. Selected Poems, compiled and with an introduction by John Sparrow, J. Murray, 1948. St.

Katherine's Church, Chiselhampton, Oxfordshire: Verses Turned in Aid of a Public Subscription towards the Restoration of the Church of St. Katherine, Chiselhampton [Chiselhampton], 1950. A Few Late Chrysanthemums: New Poems, Transatlantic, 1954. Poems in the Porch, S.P.C.K. (London), 1954. Collected Poems, compiled and with an introduction by the Earl of Birkenhead, J. Murray, 1958, Houghton (Boston), 1959, 3rd enlarged edition published as John Betjeman's Collected Poems, J. Murray, 1970, Houghton, 1971, 4th edition, J. Murray, 1980. John Betjeman (selected poems), E. Hulton, 1958. Poems, Vista Books, 1960. Summoned by Bells (autobiography in verse), Houghton, 1960, new edition, J.

Murray, 1976. A Ring of Bells, selected and with an introduction by Irene Slade, J. Murray, 1962, Houghton, 1963. High and Low, J. Murray, 1966, Houghton, 1967. Six Betjeman Songs, with music by Mervyn Horder, Duckworth (London), 1967. A Nip in the Air, J. Murray, 1975, Norton (New York, NY), 1976. Betjeman in Miniature: Selected Poems of Sir John Betjeman, Gleniffer Press, 1976. Metro-land, Warren, 1977. The Best of Betjeman, selected by John Guest, J. Murray, 1978. Church Poems, J. Murray, 1981. Uncollected Poems, J. Murray, 1982. The Illustrated Summoned by Bells, J. Murray, 1994. The Illustrated Poems of John Betjeman, J.

Murray, 1995. WORKS ON ARCHITECTURE Ghastly Good Taste; or, A Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture, Chapman & Hall (London), 1933, St. Martin's (New York City), 1971. An Oxford University Chest, illustrated by L. Moholy-Nagy and others, J. Miles (London), 1938. Antiquarian Prejudice, Hogarth Press (London), 1939. Cities and Small Towns, Collins (London), 1943. English Cities and Small Towns, Collins, 1943. First and Last Loves, Musson (New York, NY), 1952. The English Town in the Last Hundred Years (Rede Lecture), Cambridge University Press, 1956. (Under pseudonym Richard M. Farren) Ground Plan to Skyline, Newman Neame (London), 1960. The City of London Churches, Pitkin Pictorials (London), 1965. Ten Wren Churches, illustrated by R. Beer, Editions Electo, 1970.

A Pictorial History of English Architecture, Macmillan (New York City), 1972. London's Historic Railway Stations, Transatlantic, 1972. West Country Churches, Society of Sts. Peter and Paul, 1973. In Praise of Churches, John Murray (London, England), 1996. EDITOR Cornwall Illustrated in a Series of Views, Architectural Press, 1934. (With Geoffrey Taylor) English, Scottish, and Welsh Landscape, 1700-c. 1860, Muller, 1944. Watergate Children's Classics, Watergate Classics (London), 1947. (With Taylor, and contributor) English Love Poems, Faber, 1957. An American's Guide to English Parish Churches, Including the Isle of Man, McDowell, Obolensky, 1958, published in England as Collins Guide to English Parish Churches, Collins, 1958, revised edition published as Collins Pocket Guide to English Parish Churches, Volume 1: The North, Volume 2: The South, 1968.

Altar and Pew: Church of England Verses, E. Hulton, 1959. (And author of introduction) Charles Tennyson Turner, A Hundred Sonnets, Hart-Davis, 1960, Dufour, 1961. (With Winnifred Hindley) A Wealth of Poetry, Blackwell, 1963. (And author of introduction and commentaries) Victorian and Edwardian London from Old Photographs, Viking, 1969. (With David Vaisey) Victorian and Edwardian Oxford from Old Photographs, Batsford, 1971. (With J. S. Gay) Victorian and Edwardian Brighton from Old Photographs, Batsford, 1972. Also editor, with Rowse, of Victorian and Edwardian Cornwall from Old Photographs, 1974, and of John Masefield's Selected Poems, 1978. General editor of "Shell Guides" series, Architectural Press, 1934- 64. TELEVISION DOCUMENTARIES The Stained Glass at Fairford, 1955.

(With Stewart Farver) Pity about the Abbey, 1965. Metro-Land, 1973. A Passion for Churches, 1974. Vicar of This Parish, 1976. Betjeman's Dublin, 1979. OTHER Shell Guide to Cornwall, Architectural Press, 1934, published as Cornwall Illustrated, Architectural Press, 1935, revised edition published as Cornwall: A Shell Guide, Faber, 1964. Devon Shell Guide, Architectural Press, 1936, revised edition, Faber, 1955. Vintage London, Collins, 1942. (And illustrator, with John Piper) Murray's Buckinghamshire Architectural Guide, J. Murray, 1948. (And illustrator, with Piper) Murray's Berkshire Architectural Guide, J. Murray, 1949. (With Piper) Shropshire: A Shell Guide, Faber, 1951. The English Scene: A Reader's Guide (includes reading list by L.

Russell Muirhead), Cambridge University Press for the National Book League, 1951. (Illustrator) Basil Fulford Lowther Clarke, English Churches, London House & Markwell, 1964. A Plea for Holy Trinity Church, Sloan Street, Church Union, 1974. John Betjeman's Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980. Lord Mount Prospect, Tragara Press, 1981. Betjeman's Cornwall, J. Murray, 1984. The Golden Treasury of John Betjeman (recording), Spoken Arts, 1984. Betjeman's London, edited by Pennie Denton, J. Murray, 1988. John Betjeman: Letters, Methuen (London), edited by Candida Lycett Green, Volume 1: 1926-1951, 1994, Volume Two, 1951-1984, 1995. (With Paul Hogarth) In Praise of Churches, J. Murray, 1996.

John Betjeman: Coming Home; an Anthology of His Prose 1920-1977, selected and introduced by Candida Lycett Green, Methuen (London), 1997. Recordings by the author of his own work include Poems, Argo, and Summoned by Bells, Argo. Contributor to books, including, A Panorama of Rural England, edited by Walter James Turner, Chanticleer Press/Hastings House, 1944; The Englishman's Country, edited by Turner, Collins, 1945; Studies in the History of Swindon, [Swindon], 1950; Gala Day London, Harvill, 1953; The Twelfth Man, Cassell, 1971; and Likes and Dislikes: A Private Anthology, Tragara Press, 1981. Author of introduction to books, including Selected Poems, by Henry J. Newbolt, Nelson, 1940; William Purcell, Onward Christian Soldier, by William Purcell, Longmans, 1957.

Book critic, Daily Telegraph, 1952, and Daily Herald (London); columnist, Spectator, 1954-58; film critic, London Evening Standard. MEDIA ADAPTATIONS: Donald Swann has set some of Betjeman's poems to music. Further Readings Bogan, Louise, A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art and Vocation, McGraw-Hill, 1970. Brooke, Jocelyn, Ronald Firbank and John Betjeman, Longmans, Green (New York, NY), 1962. Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit), Volume 2, 1974; Volume 6, 1976; Volume 10, 1979; Volume 34, 1985; Volume 43, 1987. Delaney, Frank, Betjeman Country, J. Murray, 1983. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 20: British Poets, 1914-1945, Gale, 1983.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1984, Gale, 1985. A Garland for the Laureate: Poems Presented to Sir John Betjeman on His 75th Birthday, Celandine Press, 1981. Hillier, Bevis, compiler, John Betjeman: A Life in Pictures, J. Murray, 1984. Hillier, Young Betjeman, J. Murray, 1988. Kermode, Frank, Puzzles & Epiphanies, Chilmark Press (New York City), 1962. Press, John, John Betjeman, Longman, 1974. Sparrow, John, Independent Essays, Faber, 1963. Stanford, Derek, John Betjeman: A Study, Spearman, 1961. Stapleton, Margaret L., Sir John Betjeman: A Bibliography of Writings by and about Him, Scarecrow Press (Metuchen, NJ), 1974.

Stem, Gladys, And Did He Stop and Speak to You, Regnery, 1958. Wain, John, Essays on Literature and Ideas, St. Martin's, 1963. PERIODICALS Arizona Quarterly, spring, 1963, pp. 37-49. Book Collector, winter, 1992, pp. 477-97. Books and Bookmen, May, 1967. Book World, September 15, 1968. British Book News, February, 1983, p. 116. Christian Century, February 22, 1961; June 5, 1963. Commonweal, March 3, 1961. Contemporary Review, May, 1960, pp. 286-89; July, 1994, pp. 39-41; August, 1994, p. 107. Dalhousie Review, spring, 1976, pp. 112-24.

Descant, spring, 1969. Horizon, April 13, 1946, pp. 221-38. Listener, January 26, 1967; May 23, 1985, pp. 20-1. London Magazine, March, 1967. London Review of Books, December 8, 1994, pp. 22-3. Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1984, p. 7. New Statesman, December 3, 1960, p. 894; January 6, 1961; October 3, 1969. Newsweek, November 28, 1960. New Yorker, April 18, 1959; September 2, 1967; May 23, 1970. New York Herald Tribune Lively Arts, December 4, 1960. New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, September 14, 1947, p. 6.

New York Review of Books, May 18, 1967, pp. 31-4. New York Times, October 11, 1972, p. 18. New York Times Book Review, November 27, 1960, pp. 5, 30; September 24, 1967, p. 57; December 7, 1969. New York Times Magazine, August 13, 1967. Observer (London), April 24, 1994, pp. 18-19. Poetry Review, summer, 1967. Punch, April 29, 1970. Review of English Studies, November, 1991, pp. 541-50. Spectator, October 8, 1954, pp. 443-44; December 2, 1960, p. 913; April 18, 1970; April 23, 1994, pp. 30-1.

Sunday Times (London), May 20, 1984, p. 5. Time, February 2, 1959; December 5, 1960; October 23, 1972; December 4, 1972. Times (London), July 14, 1954, p. 10; October 11, 1972, p. 16; January 9, 1983, p. 43; May 22, 1984. Times Literary Supplement, December 12, 1958, p. 720; November 10, 1966; May 21, 1970; March 27, 1981, p. 335; December 10, 1993, p. 13; December 8, 1995, p. 8. Twentieth Century, February, 1959, pp. 130-37. Western Humanities Review, summer, 1973, pp.

289-94. Discover this poet's context and related poetry, articles, and media. Poems by John Betjeman John Betjeman John Betjeman 1906 - 1984 Sir John Betjeman was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1972-1984 and was a notable poet, writer, and broadcaster. His more famous works include Mount Zion (1932), Continual Dew (1937), Old Lights for New Chancels (1940), New Bats in Old Belfries (1945), A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954), Poems in the Porch (1954), Summoned by Bells (1960), High and Low (1966), and A Nip in the Air (1974). /var/www/vhosts/jamescumminsbookseller.com/httpdocs/manager/custom/tpl.search.results.empty.php John Betjeman - Wikiquote John Betjeman Jump to: navigation , search History must not be written with bias , and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side.

Sir John Betjeman CBE ( 28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984 ) was an English poet, architectural conservationist and broadcaster. He was the British Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984. Contents Quotes[ edit ] The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living. John Piper (Penguin Books, 1944), p. 12. History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side. First and Last Loves (1952). Hymns are the poetry of the people. Radio Talk: BBC Radio (4 July 1975) Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music.[ citation needed ] There are two things you need for a jolly good hymn. The first is a set of words that expresses the mood or sentiment of the worshipper.

The second—and perhaps even more important—is a good tune … with a simple popular melody.[ citation needed ] One mark of good verse is surprise. Radio Talk. BBC Radio 4 (2 August 1978) Topography is one of my chief themes in my poetry...about the country, the suburbs and the seaside...then there come's love...and increasingly, the fear of death. Radio Talk. BBC Third Programme (1949) I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think. Radio Talk. BBC Third Programme (1949) Saint Pancras was a fourteen-year old Christian boy who was martyred in Rome in AD 304 by the Emperor Diocletian. In England he is better known as a railway station. Ghastly Good Taste, or a Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture. Title and sub-title of book (1933) Saint Pancras was a fourteen-year old Christian boy who was martyred in Rome in AD 304 by the Emperor Diocletian. In England he is better known as a railway station.

London's Historic Railway Stations (1973) Yes, I haven't had enough sex. In an interview for the television documentary Time With Betjeman (February 1983), having been asked whether he had any regrets. As quoted in: Ned Sherrin, Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations , Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 286 Collected poems (Book, 2006) [WorldCat.org] Find more libraries Librarian? Claim your library to Collected poems New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ©2006. Edition/Format: Print book : Biography : English : 1st American ed View all editions and formats Database: WorldCat Summary: Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough To get it ready for the plough. The cabbages are coming now; The earth exhales. --from "Slough" When the beloved English poet John Betjeman's Collected Poems first appeared in 1958, it made publishing history, and has now sold more than two million copies to a steadily expanding readership.

Betjeman is almost unique among poets in that his work appeals equally strongly to those who love poetry and to those who rarely read it. This volume, the first American edition of the Collected Poems, incorporates all the poems that Betjeman published after the original Collected Poems and includes a new foreword by Britain's poet laureate, Andrew Motion. Read more... Rating: You are connected to the University of Washington Libraries network Hide local services for this item OCLC FirstSearch Add library to Favorites Please choose whether or not you want other users to be able to see on your profile that this library is a favorite of yours. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item... Details Includes the author's verse autobiography Summoned by bells. Description: xxiv, 498 pages ; 21 cm Contents: Old lights for new chancels -- New bats in old belfries -- Selected poems -- A nip in the air -- Uncollected poems -- Publisher description Abstract: Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough To get it ready for the plough. The cabbages are coming now; The earth exhales.

--from "Slough" When the beloved English poet John Betjeman's Collected Poems first appeared in 1958, it made publishing history, and has now sold more than two million copies to a steadily expanding readership. Betjeman is almost unique among poets in that his work appeals equally strongly to those who love poetry and to those who rarely read it. This volume, the first American edition of the Collected Poems, incorporates all the poems that Betjeman published after the original Collected Poems and includes a new foreword by Britain's poet laureate, Andrew Motion. Reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Be the first. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Be the first. Tags Add tags for "Collected poems". Be the first. Similar Items Poets, English. Confirm this request You may have already requested this item. Please select Ok if you would like to proceed with this request anyway.

Linked Data schema:datePublished "2006" ; schema:description "Mount Zion -- Continual dew -- Old lights for new chancels -- New bats in old belfries -- Selected poems -- A few late chrysanthemums -- Poems in the porch -- Poems written after 1954 -- High and low -- A nip in the air -- Uncollected poems -- Additional poems -- Summoned by the bells."@ en ; schema:description "Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough To get it ready for the plough. The cabbages are coming now; The earth exhales. --from "Slough" When the beloved English poet John Betjeman's Collected Poems first appeared in 1958, it made publishing history, and has now sold more than two million copies to a steadily expanding readership. Betjeman is almost unique among poets in that his work appeals equally strongly to those who love poetry and to those who rarely read it.

This volume, the first American edition of the Collected Poems, incorporates all the poems that Betjeman published after the original Collected Poems and includes a new foreword by Britain's poet laureate, Andrew Motion."@ en ; John Betjeman Facts LINK / CITE ADD TO WORD LIST John Betjeman Facts John Betjeman Quotes Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984), Poet Laureate of Britain from 1972 to 1984, was the most popular English poet of the 20th century and a familiar personality on British television. John Betjeman was born in London on August 28, 1906, the only child of a prosperous silverware maker of Dutch descent. A sensitive, lonely child, he knew early that he would grow up to forswear the family business in favor of poetry. He attended prep school at Highgate, London, where one of his instructors was a recent American arrival, T. S. Eliot, who proved unresponsive to the 10-year-old's poetic efforts.

During his tenure at Dragon School, Oxford (1917-1920), Betjeman developed an abiding interest in architecture; he next attended Marlborough public school in Wiltshire, which he was to remember chiefly for its bullies. He entered Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1925 and favorably impressed the great classics scholar C. M. Bowra with his knowledge of architecture, but negatively impressed his famous tutor C. S. Lewis by his academic indifference. At Oxford he struck up a lasting friendship with Evelyn Waugh and may even have served as a model for one or more of the characters in Waugh's early novels; more importantly, Betjeman cultivated at Oxford a strong aversion to sports and an equally strong inclination towards esthetics. He left Oxford in 1928 without a degree. Early Career Betjeman taught briefly at Heddon Court School, Hertfordshire, and then worked for a while as an insurance broker before becoming, in 1931, an assistant editor of the Architectural Review. That same year he published his first book of verse, Mount Zion.

Although somewhat mannered and certainly minor, the collection was distinguished by at least one poem, "The Varsity Students' Rag," which quietly but effectively satirizes the mindless, boys-will-be-boys destructiveness of his former fellow Oxfordians. In 1933 Betjeman became editor of the Shell series of topographical guides to Britain and married Penelope Chetwode, a writer by whom he had a son and a daughter, but who pursued her own writing career abroad for most of their married life. In 1934 he became film critic for the Evening Standard but was fired less than a year later for his overly enthusiastic reviews. Betjeman's second volume of verse, Continental Dew: A Little Book of Bourgeois Verse (1937), is undistinguished but for its foreshadowing of an attitude that was to fully surface in subsequent books: a deep-dyed distrust of "modernity" in all of its guises—its indifference to tradition, its runaway materialism, and its savaging of the landscape.

Betjeman's book titles and sub-titles are frequently thematic, as in his first book on architecture, Ghastly Good Taste: a depressing story of the rise and fall of English architecture (1933); it was followed by University Chest (1938) and then Antiquarian Prejudice (1939), which defines architecture for Betjeman as not mere building styles but as the total physical environment in which life is lived. His topographical writings, which celebrate actual places he loved and excoriate places he loathed, include Vintage London (1942), English Cities and Small Towns (1943), and First and Last Loves (1952). Major Career During World War II Betjeman served variously as United Kingdom press attaché to Dublin, as BBC broadcaster, and in the British Council books department. In this period he issued two volumes of verse that revealed him to be a serious poet and not a mere "versifier": Old Lights for New Chancels (1940) and New Bats in Old Belfries (1945).

Although they share with most modern poetry a profound pessimism about life, these works established Betjeman as a distinctive voice and somewhat of an anomaly: in an age dominated by lyric-contemplative verse, Betjeman relied strongly on narrative, or at least anecdotal, elements; in an age of free verse, he wrote in tight metrical and stanzaic forms; in an age of poetic obfuscation, Betjeman, though not without his ambiguities, was accessible; in an age of tight Classical control of emotion, he was wistfully playful and even sentimental. In short, Betjeman was a throwback to the best-loved poets of English verse tradition—to Tennyson, Hardy, and Kipling. In both volumes Betjeman made humanly evocative use of place (many of his poem titles are place names), reflecting the importance of topography in his work and projecting his thesis that as the landscape grows uglier the possibility of human happiness recedes. Both volumes sold well and were favorably reviewed, but Betjeman's reputation as an architecture and topography writer still outstripped his reputation as poet.

In the 1950s Betjeman continued to write prolifically on architecture and topography, produced a book of verse—A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954), and did a year of BBC broadcasts (1957). Most important, he published his Collected Poems (1958), which was a huge seller, an astounding fact considering normal public indifference toward poetry and the consequent well-known indigence of almost all poets. His popularity was enhanced by a blank-verse autobiographical poem, Summoned by Bells (1960), a quiet, introspective account of his first 22 years, and by two more verse collections, High and Low (1966) and A Nip in the Air (1975). Sandwiched between, in 1969 Betjeman was knighted and in 1972 he was appointed Poet Laureate of Britain. Reputation and Last Years His public acclaim notwithstanding, Betjeman had his detractors among poets, critics, and scholars, many of whom found him shallow or facile and branded him a Tory traditionalist or an English provincial or a hopeless antiquarian.

His defenders and admirers, however, included Edmund Wilson, W. H. Auden (who dedicated The Age of Anxiety to Betjeman), and Philip Larkin. A London journalist once described Betjeman as "looking like a highly intelligent muffin; a plump, rumpled man with luminous, soft eyes, a chubby face topped with wisps of white hair and imparting a distinct air of absentmindedness … [with] an eager manner, a kind of old-fashioned courtesy and a sudden, schoolboy laugh which crumples his face like a paper bag." Poor health curtailed Betjeman's writing efforts in his later years, but what energies he had were dedicated to his continuing campaign for the preservation of historic buildings. After suffering from Parkinson's disease of a number of years, Betjeman had a stroke in 1981 and a heart attack in 1983. He died on May 19, 1984, at his home in Trebetherick, Cornwall, attended by his companion of many years, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish. Further Reading on John Betjeman The most helpful critical sources are W. H.

Auden's introduction to Betjeman's Slick But Not Streamlined (1947); Bernard Bergonzi's "Culture and Mr. Betjeman," Twentieth Century (February 1959); and Frank Kermode's "Henry Miller and John Betjeman," Puzzles & Epiphanies (1962). The best biographical sources are Betjeman's own Summoned by Bells (1960), C. M. Bowra's Memories 1898-1939 (1967), John Press's John Betjeman (1974), and an album of photographs, caricatures, and ephemera titled John Betjeman: A Life in Pictures by Bevis Hillier (1985). Additional Biography Sources John Betjeman - John Betjeman Biography - Poem Hunter John Betjeman - John Betjeman Biography - Poem Hunter Biography Biography of John Betjeman Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack". He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture.

Starting his career as a journalist, he ended it as one of the most popular British Poets Laureate to date and a much-loved figure on British television. Life Early Life and Education Betjeman was born "John Betjemann"; this was changed to the less German "Betjeman" during the First World War. He grew up at Parliament Hill Mansions in the Lissenden Gardens private estate in Highgate in North London. His parents Mabel (née Dawson) and Ernest Betjemann had a family firm which manufactured the kind of ornamental household furniture and gadgets distinctive to Victorians. His father's forebears had come from the Netherlands,] more than a century earlier, setting up their home and business in Islington, London. Betjeman was baptised at St. Anne's Church Highgate Rise, a 19th Century church situated just at the foot of Highgate West Hill. In 1909, the Betjemanns left the Parliament Hill Mansions, moving half a mile north to more opulent Highgate.

From West Hill they lived in the reflected glory of the Burdett-Coutts estate: "Here from my eyrie, as the sun went down, I heard the old North London puff and shunt, Glad that I did not live in Gospel Oak." Betjeman's early schooling was at the local Byron House and Highgate School, where he was taught by the poet T. S. Eliot. After this, he boarded at the Dragon School preparatory school in North Oxford and Marlborough College, a public school in Wiltshire. In his penultimate year, he joined the secret 'Society of Amici' in which he was a contemporary of both Louis MacNeice and Graham Shepard. While at school, his exposure to the works of Arthur Machen won him over to High Church Anglicanism, a conversion of importance to his later writing and conception of the arts. Magdalen College, Oxford Betjeman entered the University of Oxford with considerable difficulty, having failed the mathematics portion of the university's matriculation exam, Responsions. He was, however, admitted as a commoner (i.e., a non-scholarship student) at Magdalen College and entered the newly created School of English Language and Literature.

At Oxford, Betjeman made little use of the academic opportunities. His tutor, a young C. S. Lewis, regarded him as an "idle prig" and Betjeman in turn considered Lewis unfriendly, demanding, and uninspired as a teacher. Betjeman particularly disliked the coursework's emphasis on linguistics, and dedicated most of his time to cultivating his social life, his interest in English ecclesiastical architecture, and to private literary pursuits. During his time at Oxford he was a friend of Maurice Bowra, Dean of Wadham. He had a poem published in Isis, the university magazine and was editor of the Cherwell student newspaper during 1927. His first book of poems was privately printed with the help of fellow-student Edward James. He famously brought his teddy bear Archibald Ormsby-Gore up to Magdalen with him, the memory of which later inspired his Oxford contemporary Evelyn Waugh to include Sebastian Flyte's teddy Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited. Much of this period of his life is recorded in his blank verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells published in 1960 and made into a television film in 1976.

It is a common misapprehension, cultivated by Betjeman himself, that he did not complete his degree because he failed to pass the compulsory holy scripture examination, known as Divinity, or, colloquially, as "Divvers". In Hilary Term 1928, Betjeman failed Divinity for the second time. He had to leave the university (rustication) for the Trinity Term to prepare for a retake of the exam; he was then allowed to return in October. Betjeman then wrote to the Secretary of the Tutorial Board at Magdalen, G. C. Lee, asking to be entered for the Pass School, a set of examinations taken on rare occasions by undergraduates who are deemed unlikely to achieve an honours degree. In his verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells, Betjeman claims that his tutor, C. S. Lewis, said "You'd have only got a third". However, Lewis had informed the tutorial board that he thought Betjeman would not achieve an honours degree of any class. Permission to sit the Pass School was granted. Betjeman famously decided to offer a paper in Welsh.

Osbert Lancaster tells the story that a tutor came by train twice a week (first class) from Aberystwyth to teach Betjeman. However, Jesus College had a number of Welsh tutors who more probably would have taught him. Betjeman finally had to leave at the end of the Michaelmas Term, 1928. Betjeman did pass his Divinity examination on his third try but was 'sent down' after failing the Pass School. He had achieved a satisfactory result in only one of the three required papers (on Shakespeare and other English authors). Betjeman's academic failure at Oxford rankled him for the rest of his life and he was never reconciled with C.S. Lewis, towards whom he nursed a bitter detestation. This situation was perhaps complicated by his enduring love of Oxford, from which he accepted an honorary doctorate of letters in 1974. After University Betjeman left Oxford without a degree but he had made the acquaintance of people who would influence his work, including Louis MacNeice and W. H. Auden. After university, Betjeman worked briefly as a private secretary, school teacher and film critic for the Evening Standard.

He was employed by the Architectural Review between 1930 and 1935, as a full time assistant editor, following their publishing of some of his freelance work. Mowl (2000) says, "His years at the Architectural Review were to be his true university". At this time, while his prose style matured, he joined the MARS Group, an organisation of young modernist architects and architectural critics in Britain. On 29 July 1933 Betjeman married the Hon. Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of Field Marshal Lord Chetwode. The couple lived in Berkshire and had a son, Paul, in 1937. Their daughter, Candida Lycett Green was born in 1942. The Shell Guides, were developed by Betjeman and Jack Beddington, a friend who was publicity manager with Shell-Mex Ltd. The series aimed to guide Britain's growing number of motorists around the counties of Britain and their historical sites. They were published by the Architectural Press and financed by Shell.

By the start of World War II 13 had been published, of which Cornwall (1934) and Devon (1936) had been written by Betjeman. A third, Shropshire, was written with and designed by his good friend John Piper in 1951. In 1939, Betjeman was rejected for active service in World War II but found war work with the films division of the Ministry of Information. In 1941 he became British press attaché in Dublin, Ireland, then a neutral country, working with Sir John Maffey. He may have been involved with the gathering of intelligence. He is reported to have been selected for assassination by the IRA. The order was rescinded after a meeting with an unnamed Old I.R.A. man who was impressed by his works. Betjeman wrote a number of poems based on his experiences in "Emergency" World War II Ireland including "The Irish Unionist's Farewell to Greta Hellstrom in 1922" (actually written during the war) which contained the refrain "Dungarvan in the rain".

" Greta", the object of his affections, has remained a mystery until recently revealed to have been a member of a well known West Waterford Ascendancy family. His official brief included establishing friendly contacts with leading figures in the Dublin literary scene: he befriended Patrick Kavanagh, then at the very start of his career . Kavanagh celebrated the birth of Betjeman's daughter with a poem " Candida"; another well known poem contains the line Let John Betjeman call for me in a car. After the Second World War John's wife, Penelope Betjeman became a Roman Catholic in 1948. The couple drifted apart and in 1951 he met Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, with whom he developed an immediate and lifelong friendship. By 1948 Betjeman had published more than a dozen books. Five of these were verse collections, including one in the USA. Sales of his Collected Poems in 1958 reached 100,000. The popularity of the book prompted Ken Russell to make a film about him, John Betjeman: A Poet in London (1959).

Filmed in 35mm and running 11 minutes and 35 seconds, it was first shown in England on BBC's Monitor programme. He continued writing guidebooks and works on architecture during the 1960s and 1970s and started broadcasting. He was also a founder member of The Victorian Society (1958). Betjeman was also closely associated with the culture and spirit of Metro-land, as outer reaches of the Metropolitan Railway were known before the war. In 1973 he made a widely acclaimed television documentary for the BBC called Metro-land, directed by Edward Mirzoeff. On the centenary of Betjeman's birth in 2006, his daughter led two celebratory railway trips: one from London to Bristol, the other, through Metro-land, to Quainton Road. In 1975, he proposed that the Fine Rooms of Somerset House should house the Turner Bequest, so helping to scupper the plan of the Minister for the Arts for a Theatre Museum to be housed there. Betjeman was fond of the ghost stories of M.R. James and supplied an introduction to Peter Haining's book M.R.

James – Book of the Supernatural. He was susceptible to the supernatural. Diana Mitford tells the story of Betjeman staying at her country home, Biddesden House, in the 1920s. She says, "he had a terrifying dream, that he was handed a card with wide black edges, and on it his name was engraved, and a date. He knew this was the date of his death". For the last decade of his life Betjeman suffered increasingly from Parkinson's Disease. He died at his home in Trebetherick, Cornwall on 19 May 1984, aged 77 and is buried half a mile away in the churchyard at St Enodoc's Church. Poetry Betjeman's poems are often humorous and in broadcasting he exploited his bumbling and fogeyish image. His wryly comic verse is accessible and has attracted a great following for its satirical and observant grace.

Auden said in his introduction to Slick But Not Streamlined, "so at home with the provincial gaslit towns, the seaside lodgings, the bicycle, the harmonium." His poetry is similarly redolent of time and place, continually seeking out intimations of the eternal in the manifestly ordinary. There are constant evocations of the physical chaff and clutter that accumulates in everyday life, the miscellanea of an England now gone but not beyond the reach of living memory. He talks of Ovaltine and the Sturmey-Archer bicycle gear. "Oh! Fuller's angel cake, Robertson's marmalade," he writes, "Liberty lampshades, come shine on us all." In a 1962 radio interview he told teenage questioners that he could not write about 'abstract things', preferring places, and faces. Philip Larkin wrote of his work, "how much more interesting & worth writing about Betjeman's subjects are than most other modern poets, I mean, whether so-and-so achieves some metaphysical inner unity is not really so interesting to us as the overbuilding of rural Middlesex".

Betjeman was a practising Anglican and his religious beliefs come through in some of his poems. He combined piety with a nagging uncertainty about the truth of Christianity. Unlike Thomas Hardy, who disbelieved in the truth of the Christmas story, while hoping it might be so, Betjeman affirms his belief even while fearing it might be false. In the poem "Christmas", one of his most openly religious pieces, the last three stanzas that proclaim the wonder of Christ's birth do so in the form of a question "And is it true...?" His views on Christianity were expressed in his poem "The Conversion of St. Paul", a response to a radio broadcast by humanist Margaret Knight: But most of us turn slow to see The figure hanging on a tree And stumble on and blindly grope Upheld by intermittent hope, God grant before we die we all May see the light as did St. Paul. Betjeman became Poet Laureate in 1972, the first Knight Bachelor ever to be appointed (the only other, Sir William Davenant, had been knighted after his appointment).

This role, combined with his popularity as a television performer, ensured that his poetry eventually reached an audience enormous by the standards of the time. Similarly to Tennyson, he appealed to a wide public and managed to voice the thoughts and aspirations of many ordinary people while retaining the respect of many of his fellow poets. This is partly because of the apparently simple traditional metrical structures and rhymes he uses. In the early 1970s, he began a recording career of four albums on Charisma Records which included "Banana Blush" (1973) and "Late Flowering Love" (1974), where his poetry reading is set to music with overdubbing by leading musicians of the time. Betjeman and Architecture Betjeman had a fondness for Victorian architecture and was a founding member of Victorian Society. He wrote London's Historic Railway Stations in 1972, defending the beauty of the twelve of London's railway stations. He led the campaign to save Holy Trinity, Sloane Street in London when it was threatened with demolition in the early 1970s. He fought a spirited but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to save the Propylaeum, known commonly as the Euston Arch, London.

He is considered instrumental in helping to save the famous façade of St Pancras railway station, London and was commemorated when it re-opened as an international and domestic terminus in November 2007. He called the plan to demolish St Pancras a "criminal folly". About the station itself he wrote, "What [the Londoner] sees in his mind's eye is that cluster of towers and pinnacles seen from Pentonville Hill and outlined against a foggy sunset, and the great arc of Barlow's train shed gaping to devour incoming engines, and the sudden burst of exuberant Gothic of the hotel seen from gloomy Judd Street." On the re-opening St Pancras in 2007, a statue of Betjeman by Martin Jennings was erected in the station at platform level. Betjeman responded to architecture as the visible manifestation of society's spiritual life as well as its political and economic structure. He attacked speculators and bureaucrats for what he saw as their rapacity and lack of imagination.

In the preface of his collection of architectural essays, First and Last Loves says: "We accept the collapse of the fabrics of our old churches, the thieving of lead and objects from them, the commandeering and butchery of our scenery by the services, the despoiling of landscaped parks and the abandonment to a fate worse than the workhouse of our country houses, because we are convinced we must save money." In a BBC film made in 1968 but not broadcast at that time, Betjeman described the sound of Leeds to be of "Victorian buildings crashing to the ground". He went on to lambaste John Poulson's building, British Railways House (now City House) saying how it blocked all the light out to City Square and was only a testament to money with no architectural merit. He also praised the architecture of Leeds Town Hall. In 1969 Betjeman contributed the foreword to Derek Linstrum's Historic Architecture of Leeds. Legacy A memorial window, designed by John Piper, is set in All Saints' Church, Farnborough, Berkshire, where Betjeman lived in the adjoining Rectory.

The Betjeman Millennium Park at Wantage in Oxfordshire (formerly in Berkshire), was where he lived from 1951 to 1972 and where he set his book, Archie and the Strict Baptists The John Betjeman Young People's Poetry Competition was inaugurated in 2006 to celebrate Betjeman's centenary. The competition is open to 11–14 year olds living anywhere in the British Isles and the Republic of Ireland. The spirit behind the competition is to encourage young people to understand and appreciate the importance of place. One of the two engines used on the pier railway at Southend-on-Sea is named Sir John Betjeman (the other being Sir William Heygate). In 2003, to mark their Centenary, the residents of Lissenden Gardens in London put up a plaque to mark Betjeman's birth place. The statue of John Betjeman at St Pancras station by sculptor Martin Jennings was unveiled in 2007.

Honours 1960 Queen's Medal for Poetry 1960 CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) 1968 Companion of Literature, the Royal Society of Literature 1969 Knight Bachelor 1973 Honorary Member, the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Betjeman's Works: Verses The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried, Felixstowe, Or The Last Of Her Order With one consuming roar along the shingle The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down To where its backwash and the next wave mingle, A mounting arch of water weedy-brown A Mind's Journey To Diss Dear Mary, Yes, it will be bliss To go with you by train to Diss, Your walking shoes upon your feet; An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffiel... High dormers are rising So sharp and surprising, And ponticum edges The driveways of gravel; Devonshire Street W.1 The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet.

The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene With Edwardian faience adornment — Devonshire Street. Collected Poems: Betjeman, John: Trade Paperback: 9780374126537: Powell's Books Collected Poems Ships in 1 to 3 days Qty Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough To get it ready for the plough. The cabbages are coming now; The earth exhales. --from "Slough" When the beloved English poet John Betjeman's Collected Poems first appeared in 1958, it made publishing history, and has now sold more than two million copies to a steadily expanding readership. Betjeman is almost unique among poets in that his work appeals equally strongly to those who love poetry and to those who rarely read it. This volume, the first American edition of the Collected Poems, incorporates all the poems that Betjeman published after the original Collected Poems and includes a new foreword by Britain's poet laureate, Andrew Motion.

Review "A neat comic sense, an unfeigned comfort with 19th-century manners and forms, and a good eye for English milieus made Betjeman (1906  1984) both a great craftsman of light verse and the most popular British poet of his day. His first U.K. Collected Poems, in 1958, sold millions of copies. Newly available in the United States alongside A.N. Wilson's new biography, this big book can show Americans what so many Britons cherish: ballads and love poems devoted to strapping, tennis-playing young women; a fondness for Cornwall's seaside; devotion to traditional England, along with an amused contempt for the middle-class ways that might destroy it (the ways in which he, and his readers, actually live).

Betjeman and his sympathetic characters, from King Edward VIII to a 'husband down at the depot with car in car-park,' hike along 'stony lanes and back at six to tea,' celebrate Christmas, admire South London's churches and denounce the 'Inexpensive Progress' which plans to 'Leave no village standing./ Which could provide a landing/ For aeroplanes to roar.' Though Philip Larkin called Betjeman (poet laureate from 1972 on) his favorite contemporary poet, 'Betj' provides nothing like Larkin's memorable depths; his enviable skill, however, might entice Anglophiles, or devotees of light verse, to queue up." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review "John Betjeman has succeeded better than most of his contemporaries in narrowing the gulf between poetry and the public.

In his own province of feeling he has established a personal regency over all contemporary taste." --The Times (London) "He is in the best sense a committed writer, whose poems spring from what he really feels about real life, and as a result he brings back to poetry a sense of dramatic urgency it had all but lost." --Philip Larkin Synopsis A first American edition of the mid-twentieth-century British poet laureate's major works collects the complete body of his published works since the publication of his original volume and features a new foreword by fellow poet laureate Andrew Motion. Original. About the Author Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) was one of Britain's most recognized, beloved, and bestselling poets of the last century. He was knighted in 1969 and named Poet Laureate in 1972. Table of Contents

Question: Which poet laureate wrote the poems "Mount Zion", "New bats in old belfries" and "A nip in the air" ?
Answer: JOHN BETJEMAN