the real John Betjeman
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- UK channel 4 documentary from 2000. Very poor video quality and synchronisation, but an excellent insight into the complex man behind the avuncular image. If anyone has a quality copy of this, please upload. I do not own the rights to this, and offer here as 'fair use' for educational purposes. Should any parties feel that their rights be infringed or compromised, I will happily remove it.
Barry Humphries and Betjeman. This is a good documentary thank you
You're most welcome 😊
even when he spoke in daily conversation, every sentence spoken, it was as If it were a poem of great beauty. A life well lived John.
Excellent tribute but it underplayed Betjeman's very real and deep Christian faith. Like Anglicanism itself it was understated and modest, but he loved old churches not just for their architecture but for what it embodied and pointed to. Not much about trains or suburbia either, which were also his (often unfashionable) enthusiasms.
In A Bath Teashop
"Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another-
Let us hold hands and look."
She such a very ordinary little woman;
He such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
In the teashop's ingle-nook.
Love this poem, at first so ordinary and then it really hits you between the eyes with the fourth line. It has stayed with me since the first time I read it.
It is my absolute favourite of his.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful examination of his life and work.
My pleasure. So glad you enjoyed it.
I am sincerely a fan of John Betjeman, got his collected poems a four days ago.
A poet of the highest order, unlike the critics opinion.
Wonderful observation of life’s experiences.
Who cheated on his wife, thought the Catholic Church had no place on English soil, studiously avoided doing any work, condemned his dad’s workplace to ruin out of snobbery (‘trade’), and toaded after the landed gentry.
@@jonharrison9222 and jolly nice too.
@@jonharrison9222 "... condemned his dad’s workplace to ruin out of snobbery" - as if you should feel obliged to bend yourself to be your parent's commercial successor. As I've always said to my kids, "you didn't ask to be born". Comparable to expecting someone to show allegiance to Crown & country because it was your (mis?)fortune to be born here, say. The positive things he's done (and as press attache in Ireland?) far exceed what most would, myself included. Yes, an opportunistic streak for sure, in relation to potential female "suitors" (suitresses ? ) of the Great & the Good. He was put through the awfulness of Marlborough & found some fringe benefits ? No chance with a Red Brick education
I mostly admired Betjeman for his appreciation of magnificent architecture and how much of it he managed to save from obliteration.
His poems are certainly worth reading, but give me Philip Larkin and his mastery of the "conceit" anyday!
Thanks for uploading!
I think he liked St Pancreas Station so much because it was built more like a Gothic Cathedral than a train station.
Combining two of his great loves: churches and railways. Personally I think St Pancras is the finest station in London. But I prefer the original not the scooped out shell that remains.
St Pancreas is undoubtedly one of the finest buildings in London and to think the powers that be would have pulled it down if it wasn't for Sir John and a few others who saw it for what it was.
To look at me you would never imagine I like john betjeman. I like to hear him read and narrate in his travel film shorts. I'm an artist but very working class. And I heard john read a poem called going to margate..which was as it was when I was a boy.. since then I've been a fan..
I love these poems
The poem 'Slough' is a huge joke, and I've known people who lived in Slough recite it off by heart because it so accurately and amusingly describes the horrors of modern town planning at the time. This simple fact seems to have escaped the literary critic and we are given instead nothing less than a load of learned codswallop (16:53).
Hits close to home. I've had a much similar life.
I laugh at how they claim Catholicism was so foreign but all the churches Betjaman loved were built as Catholic Churches.
Maybe. But they were made more plain after Henry Tudor.
Foreign could also mean theologically. No praying to Mary and the saints. No graven image to bow too in church. No removal of the second commandment given to Moses in Exodus 20. No belief in purgatory. Salvation by faith alone.
Excellent...many thanks.
A country has a soul just like a person has a soul. John Betjeman could express that soul of the country in a way that people could feel. He was describing something deep that they recognised and responded to out of their own souls. No wonder all the intellectuals couldn't stand him with their self righteous insistence on their own right to impose their so called ideals on the populace.
He was so right about the buildings and architecture. It grew and developed organically from the soul of England as the modern intellectual buildings and planned communites just don't. How many of the utopian ideas behind the architecture created buildings that were unlivable and in twenty years were pulled down. They were monstrosities from the start and such a waste of money. it is really worth watching 'Our Friends in the North', a fantastic series that dealt with that issue in the early episodes.
bravo
The Dutch connection was a smokescreen put up during 1WW. The surname is possibly Frisian in origin, but no genuine Dutch connection has ever been proved. George Betjemann, JB's gt gt grandfather, according to family tradition, was born in Bremen in 1764 and moved to London in the 1790s but Bevis Hillier was unable to prove this by documents.
Interesting. Thanks for that. Doubtless, many 'British' families have complex genealogical histories. I wonder if this issue, informed John's desire to be accepted by the British establishment?
Sorry - the Betjemanns (spelling correct) WERE of German origin, not Dutch.
Indeed, you are correct. My understanding, is that John himself, encouraged the Dutch origin tale. Perhaps understandable at the time.
@@aaronmarchant6295 His mother said ('Summoned' I think) "Thank God you're English on your mother's side." And a neighbour: "...your name is German, John, (But I had always thought that it was Dutch)..." As you say, the insecurity of 1914. I believe his marriage certificate reads 'Betjemann' - not terribly Dutch!
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The great Barry Humpries Australian comedian, actor, author and satirist. Dame Edna Everage's alter ego. Just titled, "Friend"?
As opposed to what? Big fan of both men & genuinely curious what you mean 🤔
and, alas, no longer with us.
He was really Sir Les Patterson
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