Betjeman, Sir John

Betjeman, Sir John (1906–84), poet, educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he became friendly with Auden and MacNeice and was encouraged by Bowra. He began to publish poems in magazines (‘Death in Leamington’ appeared in the London Mercury in 1930). His first collection of verse, Mount Zion (1931), was followed by other collections, including Continual Dew: A Little Book of Bourgeois Verse (1937), New Bats in Old Belfries (1945), A few Late Chrysanthemums (1954), and his extremely successful Collected Poems (1958, expanded 1962). His blank-verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells (1960), which covers his boyhood and life at Oxford, was followed by two more collections, High and Low (1966) and A Nip in the Air (1972). He was appointed poet laureate in 1972. His poetry is predominantly witty, urbane, satiric, and light of touch, a comedy of manners, place-names, and contemporary allusions. In the preface to Old Lights for New Chancels (1940) Betjeman writes of his own ‘topographical predilection’ for ‘suburbs and gaslights and Pont Street and Gothic Revival churches and mineral railways, provincial towns and garden cities’, a predilection also displayed in his editing and writing of Shell Guides and various works on architecture, beginning with Ghastly Good Taste (1933). His Letters 1926–1951, ed. by his daughter, were published in 1994.