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A very English poet

From the The Oxford Times, first published Thursday 27th Jul 2006.

Jeannine Alton reviews the centenary exhibition of Sir John Betjeman

We all know John Betjeman. Plumpish, jolly, schoolboyish in voice and manner, infectiously enthusing about trains and church architecture, capturing in easy-seeming verse the essence of English life.

His daughter and biographer, Candida Lycett Green, opening a centenary exhibition at the Bodleian Library, confirmed that he "didn't take himself seriously" and we have the famous Jane Bown photograph of him roaring with laughter on the Cornish coast.

Yet this licensed buffoon of a national treasure, who signed a letter artiste et poseur' knew harder times when he touted gently for more radio commissions; he loved the smells and bells of church liturgy but doubted his own self-worth. Some of the later poems reflect despair at the approcah of death.

Little of that features in the show John Betjeman and Oxford. The knighthood, the laureateship, are outside its scope. But wall-hung banners carry well-loved extracts from the poems, and the exhibits have scholarly, very informative labels.

So why, oh why, couldn't they be incorporated, with the briefest of introductory matter, in a short, cheap take-home brochure as at the Ashmolean Museum? The show's on till October 28 so surely it would be worth it.

Sorry. End of grumble. Actually, the dominant feel of the show is nothing but the best' in the galaxy of famous friends among whom he moved, and in his own consciousness of his poetic gift.

At the Dragon School, he played in Henry V, in the of Pirates of Penzance with Hugh Gaitskell and turned in, aged 13.6, four delightful stanzas in limerick form Whatever will rhyme with the summer? which is as good a piece of light verse as you'll find.

At Oxford, we see him editing the student magazine Cherwell, acting in Oxford University Dramatic Society Fagan's Dream, and Komisarjewsky's Lear, legendary producers both, and making more famous friends Auden, Spender, MacNeice, the mysterious Edward James, and, less obviously, Tom Driberg and the fearsomely brilliant classicist and satirist John Sparrow, whom Betjeman neatly hit off as "already half a don, Sparrovian John" (pity he cut the lines later).

And don't imagine he was a hanger-on at this dazzling feast. They were lifelong friends, and Sparrow, no less, became a literary adviser, carefully reading and amending drafts of the poems you can see his signed suggestions or approval such as "Very good, this Maurice (Bowra) bit".

Later, the published Betjeman attracted nothing but the best as editors Auden, Sparrow, Larkin, Motion and illustrators Piper, Hugh Casson, David Gentleman.

Less friendly, infamous in fact, were his relations with his Magdalen tutor, C.S.Lewis, who found his dilettante pose insufferable, while Betjeman thought him pernickety and blamed him for his own academic failure.

Interesting to see two national treasures emerging tarnished from the encounter. I must say a chap who couldn't even manage a Pass degree (Betjeman sat only one of the three Groups') isn't among the brightest.

Betjeman could be pernickety himself on occasion. A whole case is devoted to his mega-bestseller Summoned by Bells drafts, letters, record sleeve, Radio Times cover. Betjeman dashes off letters to John Murray, often more than one a day. He wants a brown paper-looking dustjacket then writes again to specify the sort of brown paper. And endearingly, describes it as the "dear private giggles of a private world".

Private or not, it made him rich and famous, and, remarkably, touched countless readers who might have despised it as a toff rattling his silver spoon. It's the lists of familiar names and places and things, the traditional verse forms and rhymes that give it accessibility, still only partly dated.

And what of the only non-literary object here? Battered Archie (full snobbish name Archibald Ormsby-Gore), the teddy bear received at the age of three, brought up to Oxford (did Lewis know?), inspiration of Sebastian's Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited, and Betjeman's lifelong companion, about whom he wrote: "The only constant, sitting there, Patient and hairless, is a bear".

Yet here again is a mystery. Betjeman makes him one of the Strict Baptists, a dour sect he hates. Was Archie his conscience? A penance? Or the scapegoat for his failings?

Anyway, Betjemania rages. There are readings, unveilings of blue plaques, train journeys, film shows,a golf competition and a Betjeman Day on Radio 4 (August 28). And the Bodleian show till October 28 Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm, and Saturday, 9am-4.30pm, in the Exhibition Room. Admission is free.

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