Betjeman
  • Published: 1 November 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099498377
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $35.00

Betjeman

Formats & editions
EBook
27 Jun 2011
Paperback
1 Nov 2007
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The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller

'A joy to read and re-read - the perfect match of author and subject' Hugh Massingberd, 'Books of the Year', Spectator

John Betjeman was by far the most popular poet of the twentieth century. His collected poems sold over two million copies. Television audiences loved his quirky evocations of landscape and architecture.

As Poet Laureate, he became a national icon, but behind the public man were doubts and demons. For much of his fifty year marriage to Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of a Field Marshal, Betjeman had a relationship with Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire and Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret. Betjeman, a devout Anglican, was tormented by guilt about the storms this emotional triangle caused.

This book is the first to use fully the vast archive of personal material relating to Betjeman's private life, including literally hundreds of letters written by his wife about their life together and apart. It is a celebration of a much-loved poet, a brave campaigner for architecture at risk, and a highly popular public performer.
  • Published: 1 November 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099498377
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $35.00
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About the author

A.N. Wilson

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

Also by A.N. Wilson

The Elizabethans
Our Times
Winnie And Wolf
After The Victorians
A Jealous Ghost
My Name Is Legion
Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her
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Praise for Betjeman

Wilson's forte is the character and he brilliantly conveys Betjeman's odd mixture of introspection and sociability, gaiety and melancholia, exhibition and self-disgust ... Betjeman is a poet who badly needs saving from his soppier fans, and this Wilson has done

Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph

Funny, poignant and unusually well written, Wilson's biography does the old boy proud

Jeremy Lewis, Mail on Sunday

An A-grade demonstration of the point of Betjeman, the vast constituencies to which he appealed and the area of English life that he made his own

D.J. Taylor, Independent

Terrific... [Wilson's] book zeroes in on Betjeman's struggles with his faith, which he places dead centre of the life and work, and on his family difficulties, and does so with extraordinary imaginative sympathy... Essential

Spectator

I've always wanted to reach the human being behind John Betjeman's charming but evasive verse autobiography Summoned by Bells. Now, thanks to A. N. Wilson's Betjeman, I can

Francis Beckett, New Statesman

A joy to read and re-read - the perfect match of author and subject

Hugh Massingberd, Spectator

Beautiful, inspiring and brilliantly perceptive… The masterpiece that A.N. Wilson was born to write.

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