Bevis Hillier

The first thing that one reads, in the preface to this book, is a chastisement from Bevis Hillier for daring to read this abridged version of Mr Betjeman's life. Considering that it consists of 538 pages, not including index, one might wonder how much more the average reader needs to know about JB's passage through this mortal coil!

The book is, as the previous paragraph suggests, very thorough and, is written by someone who knew, and liked John Betjeman. This has certain advantages; having met and talked to the subject of a biography must be of value to the author but, to the book's detriment, it also means that Mr Hillier came under the considerable force of John Betjeman's personality. JB had a charm that clearly allowed him to get away with murder (not literally!) He was more than just a poet, more than just Poet Laureate, more than a proto-preservationist and more than a TV personality: he was a Personality, before reality TV made us believe that anybody could so become.

Betjeman presented himself as in touch with the ordinary man and yet, he was born into an upper middle class family and pulled himself up into higher echelons; rubbing shoulders with Royalty and the moneyed. Hillier excuses Betjeman for often taking an inexcusably boorish attitude to the little man who did not recognise, and kowtow to 'the great man' but, at least the author had the honesty to include these stories. He also tells us of John's strained relationship with his son, from whom he was estranged for a large part of his life, and the odd marital set up whereby, John was married to Penelope, loved her but probably spent more time with Lady Elizabeth Cavendish. The latter situation caused him much angst, but he never resolved it.

When one looks at Betjeman's claims to fame, the easy going attitude, which was the presented face, often seems to be a camouflage for a lack of effort. In his role as an early preservationist, with a special interest in the, then, unpopular Victorian architecture, he is frequently seen to make a splash, but then becomes bored, and it is up to others to complete the job. He also shows an ability to build a grudge upon very little basis and to hold on to his ire for many years (often for the rest of his life).

The mystery, for wrinklies, such as myself, who knew Betjeman's public face, at least through his latter days, when Parkinson's Disease robbed him of an old age to sit and look back upon his many achievements, is that, despite all of the above, despite having a political perspective that could hardly be further from JB's, one still has to admire him.

When one re-visits the poems, surely the main evidence of the man, they are easy to read and, deceptively straight forward. The 1960's was a period when British culture was reinventing itself. Poetry was expected to be difficult: much of T.S. Eliot's work is like a dense jungle upon first reading - not so Betjeman's. One feels an instant rapport with Betjeman's poems; there is an instant comfort in finding that someone else is moved by the same things as oneself. They are written in such a straight forward manner that one is, temporarily, fooled into thinking that one could have written it oneself. This is, I believe, the seat of this feeling that Betjeman is 'one of us'. This is not to say that his work does not reward a little thought; there is a layered depth to many of them which takes them soaring from the doggerel which is the best that most of us can produce.

John Betjeman will, rightly, be remembered as a great poet and a man of great charm.… (meer)