This book definitely could not be a best seller as popular fictions, but it's good for all artists---if you were an architect, painter, or poet...you'll love it. It birngs together poems, prose and painting in a way that will delight, surprise and enthuse all of us. I am happy to find this book from Amazon. Two years ago, I bought a book "Graham Green Country" which is the travelling sketchbook of Paul Hogarth, I found Hogarth is a wonderful watecolour artist, I like his painting with exceptionally free style but sometimes with very neat details. So, I traced his illustrated book " In praise of Churches", in which, his 80 water colour paintings are so impressive , vivid and delight. The author John Betjeman is famous in poem and prose. I am surprised that he is also so keen on architecture. Don't be boring about the old churches, ---in this book, it's all concerning the churches of 500 years ago---the author's life was infused by deep and very personal love of the churches. he said " I know no greater pleaseure than church crawling" ----when we are reading his note and illustrations, we will feel great fun and enjoyment and following his crawling. sometimes about the details of churches, sometimes you can find the wonderful prose, verse, poems and hymns. I particularly like the author's notes on the architectural side of churches. First, he can vision the environment, the stone paving, the church yard, the graves,...and then about the detail artistic fittings such as door knocker, stonework,the gargoyles, altar,doorhinges,the bell, the sun dial,the lectem, the calligraphy.... even the notice board!!---all those, with Hogarth's fascinating paintings! When you are entering the church, please don't forget to find out are there any artwork of your church?.....please enjoy the peaceful life with art.

Betjeman is one of the most enduring and endearing of Britain's poets. I have an old volume that regularly comes down from the shelf to both inspire and amuse me. His verse always has something to say, even on fifth, sixth or seventh reading.

There is a down-to-earth quality to Betjeman's poems and the themes he covers. He is realistic about love, faith, life and human beings. Some of his most amusing verses poke fun at characters that one gets the impression might easily be reflections of himself (see Seaside Golf, for example); his ability to laugh at himself certainly adds an air of ease and approachability to his work. Nevertheless, he is also able to deal with thorny subjects without trivializing the difficult questions they provoke, even if he often does so with a rather wicked sense of humour. For me, the most fascinating of his poems deal with God, faith and religion. Betjeman was an Anglican, and he is not shy about his faith, nor about acknowledging its shortcomings. In Westminster Abbey takes the form of a lady's wartime prayer, and is a brilliant and witty expose of religious hypocrisy; On a Portrait of a Deaf Man is a heartfelt psalmic reflection on the problem of God and evil; Senex is a hilarious confession of struggle with sexual temptation.

Elsewhere, Betjeman treats sexuality with a candour that shocks, and firmly dispells any lingering suspicions that he is merely a fat, jovial and reserved old Englishman (see Late-Flowering Lust). At other times, he offers playful reflections on love, lust, romance and courtship, as in A Subaltern's Love Song or The Olympic Girl.

His attempts at blank verse are delightful, and eminently readable, or preferably listenable (English readers will recall the documentaries he made for British television some twenty or thirty years ago, for which he recited many of his poems, including the charming Beside the Seaside, included here). He is at home musing on the things that he loves most: people and places. Many (probably most) of his poems received their inspiration, and take their titles, from places mainly in and around the English coast. He writes of them with an obvious affection.

It seems that Betjeman has not received the attention he deserves on this side of the Atlantic (US/Canada). His books are few and far between in second-hand bookshops, and my review of his collected poems seems to be the first to appear on Amazon. This is regrettable. I am sure that those who take the time to explore Betjeman's world will find they are richly rewarded; his enthusiasm for his subjects, and his gentle and avuncular manner, surely elicit an appeal that goes beyond national boundaries. This comprehensive collection comes highly recommended.

Bevis Hillier's second volume of his Betjeman biography is a massive, extremely detailed work which will appeal to the same audience that enjoyed the first volume, Young Betjeman. The book follows JB's life and career from the early days of his marriage to Penelope Chetwode in the early thirties to the massive success of his "Collected Poems" in the late fifties.
Don't expect any opinions on Betjeman's poetry, except for excerpts from contemporary reviews. This is a book about his life, not his work. And what a life! At the start of his career, working as a film critic on the Evening Standard, his colleagues included Robert Bruce Lockhart (the celebrated/notorious "British Agent"), Malcolm Muggeridge and Osbert Lancaster, who became his lifelong friend. He was an unabashed social climber starting from his days at Oxford, and managed to charm his way into the very top echelons of British and Irish society.
Bevis Hillier has a clear, neutral and unobtrusive writing style that makes for easy reading. Having said that, this is a non-fiction book and not a "page-turner". It took several weeks of bed time reading and the wealth of detail would be too much to take in over a short period. It would also spoil the enjoyment of the book not to take time to mull over some of the episodes.
There are several hundred notes at the end of the book, almost all of them attributions, but with the occasional anecdote. After using a second bookmark for a little while, I decided to just read the book. Having finished it, I then read through the more interesting notes. Among these was the information that Lady Elizabeth Cavendish (Betjeman's long-time companion), along with Arthur Calder-Marshall (who?), was the only person who refused to provide any help whatsoever with the book.
This book, along with the preceding volume and the third, expected later this year, took twenty-five years to assemble. Many of the interviewees are now deceased. We can be thankful that Bevis Hillier had the tenacity to gather this information, and the skill to put it together with such grace.