John Betjeman

'For myself/ I knew as soon as I could read and write/ That I must be a poet. Even today,/ When all the way from Cambridge comes a wind/ To blow the lamps out every time they're lit/ I know that I must light mine up again.' From his earliest boyhood memories of Highgate and Archibald, his old...

Sir John Betjeman’s unique relationship with the BBC left a lasting legacy of poetry, readings and performances. A First Class Collection features a selection of some of his most memorable and best-loved poetry. Betjeman was one of the best-known and loved Poet Laureates and over a hundred...

Betjeman's England is a place of patriotic poets and seaside coves, provincial cathedrals and eccentric dons. For fifty years, Betjeman celebrated the glories of Englishness and what it meant to be English. Against a tide of rapid change, he unearthed forgotten heroes, bygone haunts and...