Early life and education Betjeman was born in London to a prosperous silverware maker of Dutch descent. His parents, Mabel () and Ernest Betjemann, had a family firm at 34–42
Pentonville Road which manufactured the kind of ornamental household furniture and gadgets distinctive to
Victorians. During the First World War the family name was changed to the less German-looking Betjeman. His father's forebears had actually come from the present day
Netherlands more than a century earlier, setting up their home and business in
Islington, London, and during the
Fourth Anglo-Dutch War had, ironically, added the extra "-n" to avoid the anti-Dutch sentiment existing at the time. Betjeman was baptised at St Anne's Church, Highgate Rise, a 19th-century church at the foot of
Highgate West Hill. The family lived at Parliament Hill Mansions in the
Lissenden Gardens private estate in
Gospel Oak in north London. In 1909, the Betjemanns moved half a mile north to more opulent
Highgate. From West Hill they lived in the reflected glory of the
Burdett-Coutts estate: Betjeman's early schooling was at the local
Byron House and
Highgate School, where he was taught by poet
T. S. Eliot. After this, he boarded at the
Dragon School preparatory school in North Oxford and
Marlborough College, a
Private school in Wiltshire. In his penultimate year, he joined the secret Society of Amici in which he was a contemporary of both
Louis MacNeice and
Graham Shepard. He founded
The Heretick, a satirical magazine that lampooned Marlborough's obsession with sport. While at school, his exposure to the works of
Arthur Machen won him over to
High Church Anglicanism, a conversion of importance to his later writing and conception of the arts. Betjeman left Marlborough in July 1925.
Magdalen College, Oxford Betjeman entered the
University of Oxford with difficulty, having failed the mathematics portion of the university's matriculation exam,
Responsions. He was, however, admitted as a
commoner (i.e., a non-scholarship student) at
Magdalen College and entered the newly created School of English Language and Literature. At Oxford, Betjeman made little use of the academic opportunities. His tutor, a young
C. S. Lewis, regarded him as an "idle prig" and Betjeman in turn considered Lewis unfriendly, demanding, and uninspiring as a teacher. Betjeman particularly disliked the coursework's emphasis on linguistics, and dedicated most of his time to cultivating his social life, his interest in
English ecclesiastical architecture, and private literary pursuits. At Oxford, he was a friend of
Maurice Bowra, later to be Warden of
Wadham (1938 to 1970). Betjeman had a poem published in
Isis, the university magazine, and served as editor of the
Cherwell student newspaper during 1927. His first book of poems was privately printed with the help of fellow student
Edward James. He brought his teddy bear
Archibald Ormsby-Gore up to Magdalen with him, the memory of which inspired his Oxford contemporary
Evelyn Waugh to include
Sebastian Flyte's teddy
Aloysius in
Brideshead Revisited. Much of this period of his life is recorded in his
blank verse autobiography,
Summoned by Bells, published in 1960 and made into a television film in 1976. It is a common misapprehension, cultivated by Betjeman himself, that he did not complete his degree because he failed to pass the compulsory holy scripture examination,
known colloquially as "Divvers", short for "Divinity". In
Hilary term 1928, Betjeman failed Divinity for the second time. He had to leave the university for the
Trinity term to prepare for a retake of the exam; he was then allowed to return in October. Betjeman then wrote to the Secretary of the Tutorial Board at
Magdalen, G. C. Lee, asking to be entered for the Pass School, a set of examinations taken on rare occasions by undergraduates who are deemed unlikely to achieve an
honours degree. In
Summoned by Bells Betjeman claims that his tutor, C. S. Lewis, said "You'd have only got a third" – but he had informed the tutorial board that he thought Betjeman would not achieve an honours degree of any class. Betjeman did pass his Divinity examination on his third try but was expelled after failing the Pass School. He had achieved a satisfactory result in only one of the three required papers (on
Shakespeare and other English authors). He worked briefly as a private secretary, school teacher and film critic for the
Evening Standard, where he also wrote for their high-society gossip column, the "
Londoner's Diary". He was employed by the
Architectural Review between 1930 and 1935, as a full-time assistant editor, following their publishing of some of his freelance work.
Timothy Mowl (2000) says, "His years at the
Architectural Review were to be his true university". The
Shell Guides were developed by Betjeman and
Jack Beddington, a friend who was publicity manager with
Shell-Mex & BP, to guide Britain's growing number of motorists around the counties of Britain and their historical sites. They were published by the Architectural Press and financed by
Shell. By the start of World War II, 13 had been published, of which
Cornwall (1934) and
Devon (1936) were written by Betjeman. A third,
Shropshire, was written with and designed by his good friend
John Piper in 1951. In 1939, Betjeman was rejected for military service in World War II but found war work with the films division of the
Ministry of Information. In 1941, he became British press attaché in neutral
Dublin, Ireland, working with
Sir John Maffey. He is reported to have been selected for murder by the
IRA. The order was rescinded after a meeting with an unnamed Old IRA man who was impressed by his works. Betjeman wrote poems based on his experiences in
Ireland during the "Emergency" (the war) including "The Irish Unionist's Farewell to Greta Hellstrom in 1922" (written during the war) which contained the refrain "Dungarvan in the rain". The object of his affections, "Greta", remained a mystery until revealed to have been a member of a well-known
Anglo-Irish family of Western
county Waterford. His official brief included establishing friendly contacts with leading figures in the Dublin literary scene: he befriended
Patrick Kavanagh, then at the very start of his career. Kavanagh celebrated the birth of Betjeman's daughter with a poem "Candida"; another well-known poem contains the line
Let John Betjeman call for me in a car. From March to November 1944 Betjeman was assigned to another wartime job, working on publicity for the Admiralty in
Bath.
After the Second World War in the
City of London, marked with a
blue plaque (August 2007) By 1948, Betjeman had published more than a dozen books. Five of these were verse collections, including one in the US. Sales of his
Collected Poems in 1958 reached 100,000. The popularity of the book prompted
Ken Russell to make a film about him,
John Betjeman: A Poet in London (1959). Filmed in 35 mm and running 11 minutes and 35 seconds, it was first shown on the
BBC's
Monitor programme. From 1945 till 1951 he lived at The Old Rectory,
Farnborough,
Berkshire. Betjeman became Poet Laureate in 1972 following the death of Day-Lewis, the first
Knight Bachelor to be appointed (the only other, Sir
William Davenant, was knighted after his appointment). This role, combined with his profile from television appearances, ensured that his poetry reached a wider audience. Similarly to
Tennyson, he managed to voice the thoughts and aspirations of many ordinary people while retaining the respect of many of his fellow poets. This is partly because of the apparently simple traditional metrical structures and rhymes he uses. In the early 1970s, he began a recording career of four albums on
Charisma Records –
Banana Blush,
Late Flowering Love (both 1974), ''Sir John Betjeman's Britain
(1977) and Varsity Rag'' (1981) where his poetry reading is set to music composed by
Jim Parker with overdubbing by leading musicians of the time.
Madeleine Dring set five of Betjeman's poems to music in 1976, just before her death. His recording catalogue extends to nine albums, four singles and two compilations. In 1973, he made a well-regarded television documentary for the BBC called
Metro-Land, directed by
Edward Mirzoeff. In 1974, Betjeman and Mirzoeff followed up
Metro-Land with
A Passion for Churches, a celebration of Betjeman's beloved
Church of England, filmed entirely in the
Diocese of Norwich. In 1975, he proposed that the Fine Rooms of
Somerset House should house the
Turner Bequest, so helping to scupper the plan of the
Minister for the Arts for a
Theatre Museum to be housed there. In 1977, the BBC broadcast ''The Queen's Realm: A Prospect of England'', an aerial anthology of English landscape, music and poetry, selected by Betjeman and produced by Edward Mirzoeff, in celebration of the
Queen's Silver Jubilee. Betjeman was fond of the ghost stories of
M. R. James and supplied an introduction to
Peter Haining's book
M. R. James – Book of the Supernatural. He was susceptible to the supernatural;
Diana Mitford recalled Betjeman staying at her country home,
Biddesden House in Wiltshire, in the 1920s. She said: "he had a terrifying dream, that he was handed a card with wide black edges, and on it his name was engraved, and a date. He knew this was the date of his death".
Personal life and death On 29 July 1933, Betjeman married the Hon.
Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of
Field Marshal Lord Chetwode. The couple lived in Berkshire and had a son, Paul, in 1937, and a daughter,
Candida, in 1942. It was first published in 1941. His wife Penelope
converted to Catholicism in 1948. The couple drifted apart and in 1951 he met
Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, with whom he developed an immediate and lifelong friendship. Betjeman's sexuality can best be described as
bisexual. His longest and best documented relationships were with women, and a fairer analysis of his sexuality may be that he was "the hatcher of a lifetime of schoolboy crushes – both gay and straight", most of which progressed no further. Nevertheless, he has been considered "temperamentally gay", and even became a penpal of
Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, friend and lover of
Oscar Wilde. For the last decade of his life, Betjeman suffered increasingly from
Parkinson's disease. He died at his home in
Trebetherick, Cornwall, on 19 May 1984, aged 77, and is buried nearby at
St Enodoc's Church. Betjeman was an
Anglican and his religious beliefs come through in some of his poems. In a letter written on Christmas Day 1947, he said: "Also my view of the world is that man is born to fulfil the purposes of his Creator i.e. to Praise his Creator, to stand in awe of Him and to dread Him. In this way I differ from most modern poets, who are agnostics and have an idea that Man is the centre of the Universe or is a helpless bubble blown about by uncontrolled forces." He combined piety with a nagging uncertainty about the truth of Christianity. Unlike
Thomas Hardy, who disbelieved in the truth of the Christmas story while hoping it might be so, Betjeman affirms his belief even while fearing it might be false. In the poem "Christmas", one of his most openly religious pieces, the last three stanzas that proclaim the wonder of Christ's birth do so in the form of a question "And is it true...?" His views on Christianity were expressed in his poem "The Conversion of St. Paul", a response to a radio broadcast by humanist
Margaret Knight: ==Poetry==