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.
Black-and-white photo of John Betjeman, 1961, in profile, looking down as he reads a petition to save Lewisham Town Hall. He is wearing a classic fedora hat and checked tweed jacket.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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.
qtd. in
Mortimer, Penelope. About Time Too: 1940-1978. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.
50
John Betjeman called it...
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...
Friends, Associates Julia O'Faolain
Living in different countries, JOF 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 dell'Ombrellino...
Reception Kathleen Raine
She stood as a candidate for election as Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1968, but was unsuccessful. (Four years later John Betjeman told her that she would have been a better choice for Poet...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text G. B. Stern
She begins by quoting in its entirety Robert Browning 's poem entitled Memorabilia, which as she observes is better known by its opening line, Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?
qtd. in
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery, 1958.
prelims
She approaches...
Textual Production Iris Tree
John Betjeman (who became Poet Laureate in 1972) writes in his introduction to IT 's long poem The Marsh Picnic, 1966, that she had published another volume of poems in 1919 under the title...
Publishing Iris Tree
Poet John Betjeman wrote a short biographical introduction for the poem, in which he refers to its having been passed around privately before publication. Story has it that the book was finally published at the...
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...

Timeline

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Texts

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