Betjeman is one of my favourite English poets, his works are simple and based on real life. He was born in London to a well to do middle class family, in 1906. His father owned a business making ornamental furniture, of the kind loved by Victorians.. and this may have led to Betjeman's later passion for Victoriana and Victorian architecture which he liked when it was unfashionable.
He went to good schools, receiving most of his education at Marlborough, which was a famous public school. However, he did not enjoy it that much as he was literary and artistic rather than fond of sports. He went to Oxford and did not do that well there, ending up with no degree. One of his tutors was the young CS Lewis, who didn't like him. Betjeman returned the dislike. He cultivated an eccentric arty bohemian image.. and Evelyn Waugh who was at Oxford round the same time, used him as a partial model for Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited... because of his habit of carrying round a teddybear. Betjeman wanted to be a writer, and had made friends at Oxford in the world of writing, so he had a start. He began to write a gossip column and mixed with "society" people.. and he also wrote for the Architectural Review. He praised Victorian architecture... A few years later, he married Penelope Chetwode, a peer's daughter and they had 2 children.. Paul and Candida who also became a writer and campaigner like her father...
During the War, Betjeman worked at a government post in Ireland which was neutral in the conflict...and continued to write his poems.
His poems were simple and traditional in style, very English.. He liked to observe the class structure with affection, and to portray the rituals of the British.. such as pony clubs, riding, tennis etc. Some of his works were love poems to the hearty sporty girls of the 1920s, who had now been freed from Victorian restrictions and who enjoyed games and parties in a livelier way than their grandmothers.
Betjeman's marriage was happy for some time but he and his wife began to drift apart. Penelope was also a writer on travels, and she became interested in Roman Catholicism, and discussed it with her friend Evelyn Waugh who was an ardent convert. Betjeman himself had religious doubts but he cared very much about religion and was a member of the Anglican church. He became intolerant of his wife's interest in the Roman church. She did convert and he and she, while they remained married, began to grow apart. He started a relationship with Lady Elizabeth Cavendish who was a member of Princess Margaret's household.. and that relationship lasted to the end of his life. He eventually became Poet Laureate and his traditional poems were very popular. He died in 1984...
