Some people scorn this man for his speech, manner and presentation. They have grown up in our modern society where people cannot express themselves without using the F word, have a very limited vocabulary despite years in school and where image is more important than content. Sir John was of an age where class (and I dont mean social class but personal class) was something admired and valued, today's concept of class is something quite different.
Its first and only broadcast was on Wednesday 31st January 1968. From the Radio Times: The poet John Betjeman goes on a journey from Marble Arch to Edgware reciting four specially written poems: 'How beautiful the London air,' 'Ho for the Kilburn High Road,' 'The sisters Progress and Destruction dwell' and 'One after one rise these empty consecutives'. Along the way he pauses at places of interest such as the hidden Marble Arch police station from where, since 1851, a hundred policemen could lie in wait ready to emerge at the first hint of trouble. After bemoaning the loss of the Metropolitan Theatre of Variety to make way for a car park and reminiscing about the 1920s air pageants from Hendon Aerodrome, Betjeman arrives "at Edgware, a Middlesex small town that was."
Ex Pat 59 yr old Sth Londoner watching this @ 22:20 -20-01-2023 in Edmonton Canada.Thank you for this,just thank you.Sir John and his work is very important to me :0)
Betjeman for me represents that kind of warm reassuring nostalgia for a time I never knew, an England of steam trains and branch lines, the glow of parish churches at evensong and immaculately kept village greens, an idealised England of The 20th century. The past wasn't like that, but I find Betjeman's imagined past immeasurably comforting.
I was just reading his poem “Eunice” yesterday about a spinster and her Summer allotment in Kent. Marvellous. Imagine if Betjeman hadn’t drawn attention to the things he was seeing all about him.
I did that walk many times in the late 70's early 80's would go up west see a gig and it would end after the last train and back then there were no night busses so we'd walk home up the Edgeware road. I lived in Hendon so I'd bail at west Hendon and walk up station road
Loved this. I think he would die if he saw how mush worse things have got since 68. Patches of green are sadly no more in and around Hendon, and the urban sprawl is once more on the prowl.... waiting to devour Hertfordshire and Surrey and possibly most of Kent and Essex.
