Word: betjeman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Oxford,* "snob" is not just another four-letter word but a way of being. Class, according to the despairing cry of Poet John Betjeman, is the primary English passion, one that has survived the welfare state and the shrunken horizons of em pire. The subject, class, and the scene, Oxford, form the substance of this depressing but enlightening fictional report on what might be called the Cold War Generation...
Summoned by Bells, by John Betjeman. In a charming autobiography in verse, the author tells of a youth that was unremarkable except for the pain, joy and insight that go with being a poet...
...John Graves. The Brazos River in Texas was to be ruined by power dams, and the author, who writes well of the region's wildlife and wild living, tells of a three-week solo canoe trip he made as a farewell gesture. Summoned by Bells, by John Betjeman. In a charming autobiography in verse, the author tells of a boyhood and young manhood that were unremarkable except for the pain, joy and insight that go with being a poet...
Despite the lack of encouragement from T. S. Eliot, young Betjeman persisted. He haunted bookshops, became a passionate connoisseur of church architecture, a champion of the Victorian and other obsolescent styles. At Oxford he went through a lot of his father's money but did not get his degree, because, with all his love of churches, he failed in divinity...
...hated sports, had to take a job at a prep school as cricket master. There ends Summoned by Bells, neither major poetry nor an exceptional life, but a memoir suffused with moving scenes of an older England, a singing recollection of what it was to be John Betjeman-young and a poet...