Francis Wheen
Epater Les Highbrows
John Betjeman: His Life and Work
By Patrick Taylor-Martin
Allen Lane 192pp £9.95 order from our bookshop
‘It is unlikely' Patrick Taylor-Martin writes, 'that even Betjeman's most fervent admirers would claim that he was a major poet.' Is that so? What, then, are we to make ofchristopher Booker's claim that 'A Lament for Moira 'McCavendish' is the most heartrending poem in the English language? How are we to take the constant adulation of Betjeman by literary skinheads such as Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin? The truth is that there are quite a few people who do argue that John Betjeman is a-major poet - even if they do it only pour épater les highbrows.
Taylor-Martin himself is not disinclined to grant Betjeman a status he doesn't deserve. He quotes with apparent approval Dr.Johnson's comment on Gray’s Elegy:
I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary, prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Any story about Eden has to be a story about the Fall; unchanging serenity does not make a narrative.'
@suzifeay reviews Jim Crace's 'eden'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/trouble-in-paradise
The first holiday camps had an 'ethos of muscular health as a marker of social respectability, and were alcohol-free. How different from our modern Costa Brava – not to mention the innumerable other coasts around the world now changed forever'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/from-mont-blanc-to-magaluf
'The authorities are able to detain individuals in solitary confinement for up to six months at a secret location', which 'increases the risk to the prisoner of torture'.
@lucyjpop looks at two cases of China's brutal crackdown on free expression.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/xu-zhiyong-thupten-lodoe