John Betjeman

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Standard Name: Betjeman, John
JB was a writer of popular, plangent, often nostalgic poems, who served as Poet Laureate from 1969. He also published an autobiography in blank verse, a novel about a teddy bear, and books and articles on architecture.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Ann Bridge
AB 's correspondents included Ka Arnold-Foster , John Betjeman , E. M. Forster , Margaret Haig Rhondda , Margaret Irwin , John Masefield , Naomi Mitchison , I. A. Richards , Vita Sackville-West , and...
Friends, Associates Julia O'Faolain
Living in different countries, JOF has moved in different literary circles, not all Irish or English. In Florence she and her husband were welcomed into the circle of the cosmopolitan writer Violet Trefusis at Villa...
Friends, Associates Antonia Fraser
Family friends and frequent visitors to the Pakenham household included J. M. Keynes , William Beveridge (whom AF 's father had assisted in plans for the postwar Welfare State), Hugh Gaitskell , and (particularly good...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Jennings
She had a remarkably catholic talent for friendship. During her student days she became a friend of Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis . Her correspondents at this and later periods of her life included her...
Intertextuality and Influence U. A. Fanthorpe
UAF was anthologized by Adrian Barlow in Calling Kindred: Poems from the English Speaking World, 1993. At Poetry International 2000, she chose Robert Browning as her Presiding Spirit.
Connolly, Sally. “Woolly whispers of the past”. Times Literary Supplement, p. 25.
25
Other influences she claimed are...
Literary responses Rose Macaulay
The Towers of Trebizond won the James Black Tait prize.
Babington Smith, Constance. Rose Macaulay. Collins, 1972.
203
Bensen, Alice. Rose Macaulay. Twayne, 1969.
154
A reprint of 1959 quotes on its dustjacket a chorus of praise. John Betjeman and Sir Compton Mackenzie called the novel RM 's...
Literary responses Nancy Mitford
NM 's essay became notorious, causing the issue of Encounter to sell out almost immediately. It was reprinted (with the pieces by Ross and Waugh, cartoons by Osbert Lancaster , and the poem How to...
Literary responses Penelope Mortimer
The novel was a Book Society choice,
Lord, Graham. John Mortimer, The Devil’s Advocate. The Unauthorised Biography. Orion, 2005.
69
and received accolades from reviewers for its brilliantly successful attack on . . . the spiritual and physical relationship of married life.
Mortimer, Penelope. About Time Too: 1940-1978. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.
50
John Betjeman called it...
Literary responses Theodora Benson
John Betjeman , reviewing this book in the Daily Herald, called it a beautiful novel. . . . Full of acute feminine observation, drinks, jokes, talk in keeping with its varied characters, atmosphere and...
Literary responses Iris Murdoch
For a first publication, this garnered much positive comment. While The Guardian, Sir John Betjeman in the Daily Telegraph, and Angus Wilson in the Observer were comparatively unappreciative, Kingsley Amis in The Spectator...
Literary responses Monica Dickens
Persephone 's webside quotes two excellent reviews from the date of first publication—one from John Betjeman and one from Elizabeth Bowen .
Persephone Books. http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/, http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/.
Literary responses Daphne Du Maurier
Book critic Ivor Brown of the New York Times Book Review commented on the academic neglect of DDM 's work in his review of The Parasites: When the academic professors of Literature in Our...
Literary responses Rumer Godden
This was one of RG 's great successes. Her agent Spencer Curtis Brown said of the central idea, [y]ou do go out of the way to make things difficult. A little boy complained that she...
Literary responses Iris Tree
In his introduction Betjeman calls the poem strangely haunting, and judges that It belongs to the age of the 1920's [sic] and early 30's [sic], both in phraseology and outlook. According to him, it is...
Literary responses Philip Larkin
This collection was a Poetry Book Society choice. It received an award from the Arts Council and brought Larkin the Queen's Medal for Poetry in June 1965.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Brennan, Maeve. The Philip Larkin I Knew. Manchester University Press, 2002.
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Christopher Ricks hailed PL as the best...

Timeline

Late October 1955
The Welsh poetR. S. (Ronald Stuart) Thomas first came to wide notice with his collection Song at the Year's Turning (with an introduction by John Betjeman ), which drew on three earlier volumes.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive, http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
2800 (28 October 1955): 634

Texts

Betjeman, John. Antiquarian Prejudice. Hogarth Press, 1939.
Betjeman, John. Archie and the Strict Baptists. J. Murray, 1977.
Betjeman, John, and Sir Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith Birkenhead. Collected Poems. J. Murray, 1958.
Betjeman, John. Ghastly Good Taste. Chapman and Hall, 1933.
Betjeman, John, and Iris Tree. “Introduction”. The Marsh Picnic, Rampant Lions Press, 1966.
Jennings, Elizabeth, Dannie Abse, J. G. Ballard, George Barker, Bernard Bergonzi, John Betjeman, Malcolm Bradbury, Alan Brownjohn, Charles Causley, Bob Cobbing, George Sutherland Fraser, John Fuller, Roy Fuller, Helen Gardner, Robert Gittings, Ian Hamilton, Jacquetta Hawkes, Norman Hidden, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Laurence Lerner, Cecil Day-Lewis, Naomi Lewis, Edward Lucie-Smith, Adrian Mitchell, Sasha Moorsom, Thea Musgrave, Norman Nicholson Norwich, William Plomer, Peter Porter, James Reeves, Alan Ross, Vernon Scannell, Humphrey Searle, Jon Silkin, Charles Percy Snow, R. S. Thomas, Anthony Thwaite, Charles Tomlinson, Ted Walker, Cicely Veronica Wedgwood, and Hugo Williams. “Letters to the Editor: Future of Radio”. Times, p. 11.
Betjeman, John. Mount Zion. The James Press, 1931.
Betjeman, John. Summoned by Bells. J. Murray, 1960.
Tree, Iris, and John Betjeman. The Marsh Picnic. Rampant Lions Press, 1966.