John Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman
1906-1984
(source: HamHigh)
no copyright infringement intended

English poet with a deep fondness for the Victorian architecture (add to this his special interest for ecclesiology, liturgy and the like, with emphasis on the formality of the ritual and resistance to modernity; by the way he was an Anglican and belonged to the High Church orientation; for me, sufficient reasons to love this guy). Now you'd think that such a type would not be very popular; by the contrary, his natural humor, his sense of self-irony (playing all the time the bumbling and fogeyish one) made him very much sympathized by people. A passionate defender of everything Victorian he remained in the public memory with his great TV broadcasts on the subject. As for his poetry, here is a great phrase, coined by W.H. Auden: so at home with the provincial gaslit towns, the seaside lodgings, the bicycle, the harmonium (by the way, I don't know who coined that one with bumbling and fogeyish, but I like it).


(A Life in Books)

(Auden)