Betjeman and Me

Since his death in 1983, John Betjeman has remained one of Britain’s most popular poets.  He’s the nation’s favourite teddy bear, the Bertie Wooster of light verse, but sometimes he isn’t taken as seriously as he should be.

This film was intended to redress the balance.  I made it with the very wonderful Griff Rhys-Jones for BBC 2.

The aim was to see how much Betjeman’s work has come to define post-war Britain; the deep melancholy, the sense of loss, old certainties under threat

Perhaps one of the main reasons for the poet’s success was his ability to unite this idea of national decline with the universal theme of the end of childhood. Like Wordsworth, he knew exactly what it was like to be a child and to feel the pain involved in the loss of innocence.

The theme of loss mirrors the sense of ageing, of years passing:  both in our own lives and in the age in which we live. Betjeman reminds us of the need to laugh in the face of it all, and, at the same time, he shows us the pain behind the laughter, the anguish behind our petty vanities.

I had the same education as John Betjeman (The Dragon School and Marlborough College), and I met him when I was seventeen. I even appear, albeit briefly, in the film of Summoned by Bells.  His love of landscape, his constant debate between faith and doubt, his love of laughter and girls strike a particularly resonant chord.

I made hay while the sun shone.
My work sold.
Now, if the harvest is over
And the world cold,
Give me the bonus of laughter
As I lose hold.

All the fans and admirers were involved – Joanna Lumley, Barry Humphries, Stephen Fry, John Mortimer, John Sergeant, Craig Brown, and Craig Raine – and it was tremendous fun to make.