Word: betjeman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...John Betjeman, 52, is a gentle, witty, rumpled Englishman who has been called "the greatest bad poet now living." It would be in character if he agreed with that estimate, although he can be called "bad" only in the sense that his rhymes sometimes jingle like a song writer's and that his subjects are often deliberately homely. Literary bookmakers predict that Betjeman (rhymes with fetch-a-man) will be England's next poet laureate. By last week, his Collected Poems had caused a rush on British bookstores probably unmatched by any newly published work of poetry since...
...cause of his success is not just his billing as "the poet the Princess reads" (Margaret does). It is simply that Britons of all classes think Betjeman one of the pleasantest men alive. He himself says that he cannot understand why people buy his verse ("I don't call it poetry"), and he describes himself as "a passionate observer of the second-rate." Actually, Betjeman observes a great deal more than the second-rate. He has a unique eye for the twilight of changing times, although he is one Englishman who looks neither back in anger nor forward...
Kindly Stygian. Betjeman's nostalgia is for the Victorian past; his heart is in its poor remnants, and he frankly calls himself "a case of arrested development." He was raised comfortably in London, great-grandson of a Dutch-descended Englishman who grew rich on inventions such as the tantalus, a contrivance to keep Victorian housemaids out of the port. Betjeman went to Oxford's Magdalen College, where he detested his tutor (Author C. S. Lewis), failed to get a degree because he forgot to take "divvers" (divinity...
Once an assistant editor of Architectural Review, Betjeman has a rare knowledge and love of English places that is even more famed in Britain than his poetry. To keep his island from becoming "a right little, tight little clinic," he is constantly embroiled in some passionate public campaign -to subdue TV aerials, to save ancient towing canals or musty little churches. He writes glowing guidebooks, and he has so cleaned up the despised name of Victorian Gothic architecture that some of his readers are able to look even on London's Stygian train terminals with a kindly...
...began with a letter to the Church Times, signed by four clergymen and four laymen, among them such prominent Anglican names as Deacon Hugh Ross Williamson, Church Architect J. Ninian Comper and Poet John Betjeman. The "proposed United Christian Rally," they wrote, "has filled us with misgiving . . . We . . . think that the participation of the Church of England may give the . . . impression that the Roman Catholics are the only religious body which defends the full Catholic faith. Whatever may be the intention of the organizers, the effect can hardly fail to be an emphasis on the 'churches' with...