A N Wilson
His Country’s Saviour
John Betjeman: Letters Volume One: 1926–1951
By Candida Lycett-Green (ed)
Methuen 448pp £20 order from our bookshop
More than of any other dead poet, England hath need of John Betjeman. This volume will be some compensation for his physical absence. By an act of editorial necromancy, Candida Lycett-Green has summoned her father to life again.
Long before there was a gallery to play to, the Betjeman show was in full swing. That is the extraordinary fact revealed by these letters. Those of us who did not know him personally, but love the late Laureate as a famous poet or television artist, will find our hero, long before he was heard of. Here he is being Betjeman: that extraordinary mixture of whimsy and learning, high camp and serious piety, idleness and prodigious energy.
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
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2