?A real treat ... A lovely, lovely anthology? (Daily Mail, Val Hennessy, Critic?s Choice )

?Games? has produced a volume which no Betjemaniac will be without.? 

(Evening Standard: A.N. Wilson )

'What a joy?

(Sunday Herald Magazine )

'Beautifully produced? Betjeman was evidently a comic writer of the highest class?

(Guardian )

'Excellent'

(Spectator )

'Informative and entertaining'

(Scotsman )

?In Trains and Buttered Toast Betjeman?s voice is gloriously new again?

(The Times )

?Stephen Games has made a useful, entertaining selection of Betjeman?s radio talks?

(Sunday Telegraph )

Eccentric, sentimental and homespun, John Betjeman?s passions were mostly self-taught. He saw his country being devastated by war and progress and he waged a private war to save it. His only weapons were words ? the poetry for which he is best known and, even more influential, the radio talks that first made him a phenomenon.

From fervent pleas for provincial preservation to humoresques on eccentric vicars and his own personal demons, Betjeman?s talks combined wit, nostalgia and criticism in a way that touched the soul of his listeners from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Now collected in book form for the first time, his broadcasts represent one of the most compelling archives of twentieth-century broadcasting, reawakening the modern reader to Betjeman?s unique perspective and the compelling magic of the golden age of wireless.

Eccentric, sentimental and homespun, John Betjeman's passions were mostly self-taught. He saw his country being devastated by war and progress and he waged a private war to save it. His only weapons were words - the poetry for which he is best known and, even more influential, the radio talks that first made him a phenomenon. From fervent pleas for provincial preservation to humoresques on eccentric vicars and his own personal demons, Betjeman's talks combined wit, nostalgia and criticism in a way that touched the soul of his listeners from the 1930s to the 1950s. Now collected in book form for the first time, his broadcasts represent one of the most compelling archives of twentieth-century broadcasting, reawakening the modern reader to Betjeman's unique perspective and the compelling magic of the golden age of wireless.

John Betjeman was born in 1906 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. His gave his first radio talk in 1932; future appearances made him into a national celebrity. He was knighted in 1969 and became poet laureate in 1972. He died in 1984.

Stephen Games was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, made documentaries for BBC Radio 3 and was the first arts correspondent on the Independent. He has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and deputy editor of the RIBA Journal.

2007-06-26 The bible of Englishness

This is the most enjoyable Betjeman book I've ever read - a book that's so good, it ought to be part of the English Literature curriculum. More than that: it ought to be read by everyone applying for British citizenship! In the course of 360 pages, Betjeman plunges you into what he regarded as the major issues of English identity - issues of aesthetics, civic duty, relations with authority, and individuality.

I suppose that all these ideas are contained in Betjeman's poetry, but there one tends to get distracted into noticing rhythm and metre and scansion. And Betjeman's poetic ideas are smaller. Here, although the writing is often lyrical, he addresses topics in a much more direct way. He cares that unvalued townscapes are being destroyed, that there might be collusion between commercial interests and public officials, that the recent past and the middle brow are ignored by modern taste-makers. Especially in his earlier essays, he writes about these issues with passion and yet with a lightness of touch that engages the reader completely. Read this, and you cannot fail to agree that Betjeman stands as one of the foremost spokesmen of the twentieth century.


"Trains and Buttered Toast" (with its beautful cover design by Duff Tollemache) also shows that Betjeman was fascinated by individuals and individuality. He is correspondingly cruel about English stereotypes - the lumpen proletariat who, in the late 1940s, listened to popular music on car radios or went on holiday in luxury coaches. His point, however, is to criticise people's failure to open their eyes, ask original questions and discover fresh beauties - something he sees as the public's sheep instinct. The antidote, he suggests, is to look for inspiration at people who didn't go where everyone else went and who weren't damaged by commercial pressures and mass production. He finds his role models in Victoriana, an age that he regards as rich in the culture of individuality. Many of his talks explore this in its most extreme manifestation - in eccentricity and in provincialism. In fact, among the most entertaining talks in the entire book are those that look at individuals who dedicated themselves to the church. Never before Betjeman was there a literary category devoted to "West of England Victorian hymn-writing vicars". Now there is!

Spread a little happiness. Buy this book - and buy it for your friends. They'll love you for it: it's a total joy.