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This volume gathers together all of Betjeman's "Church poems," as well as some new poems and others which had previously been out of print. John Betjeman has a stimulaitng way of enlarging any specific scene, not only into his own personal significances, but into those of us all, and never more so than in his Anglicanexplorations. In these poems we are shown, with his loving eye for detail and the human element and with his affectionate humour, how inside the confines of a church conjure up a whole parish. ... Read more

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John Betjeman's verse autobiography has sold more copies than any other English poem of its length this century. The touching story of a boy's growth to early manhood and the mixed joys and guilt of youth, it is also supremely a poem about places, buildings and surroundings - Highgate and Pooterland, t Cornish seaside and Chelsea, Marlborough among its Downs, the quads of Oxford, parish churches and tin advertisements on railway platforms. Who better to illustrate this autobiography than Hugh Casson, architect and former President of the Royal Academy, who has already delighted us with illustrated books on London, Cambridge and Oxford which show him to be as much in love with those places as Betjeman himself. Casson is Beqemz very near contemporary and was a close friend, matching him in passion for all matters architectural and like him a keen observer of the splendid and ridiculous. He has delighted in Summoned by Bells since it first appeared and his illustrations in line and water-colour are a perfect complement to the verse- ... Read more

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Oh prams on concrete balconies, what will your children see? Oh white and antiseptic life in school and home and clinic, oh soul-destroying job with handy pension, oh loveless life of safe monotony, why were you created?'First and Last Loves is a collection of Betjeman's essays on architecture, first published to coincide with an exhibition at the Soane Museum, and a worthwhile volume in its own right. Introduced with a lively tirade against mediocrity entitled 'Love is Dead', Betjeman discusses a range of topics including conservation battles, modern architecture and his passion for railways. ... Read more

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"Here is a guided tour of Englisharchitecture from prehistoric standing stones to modern skyscrapers...." ... Read more

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In this work, John Betjeman discovers the old Tudor brick behind the modern shop front and explores the alleyways as well as the main street in this study of English cities and small towns. ... Read more

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My own interest started in seeking out what was old. When the guide told me that this was the bed in which Queen Elizabeth slept, I believed him. When owners of country cottages in Suffolk told me their cottage was a thousand years old, I believed them too. I thought that this or that church was the smallest in England, and that secret passages ran under ruined monasteries, so that monks could get to the nearest convent without being seen. The older anything was the lovelier I thought it.'Most famous for his poetry, John Betjeman was also passionate about architecture, 'preferring all centuries to my own'. In his first prose work, Ghastly Good Taste (1933), he vigorously defends his love of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, considered deeply unfashionable at the time. With the savage humour of his famous satire 'Slough', he attacks notions of Modernism and (at the other extreme) unthinking antiquarianism. ... Read more