Betjeman Read online

  Lycett Green, Endellion (JB’s granddaughter)

  Lycett Green, Rupert (Candida’s husband)

  Lynam, A.E. (‘Hum’)

  Lynam, Audrey

  Lynam, Charles Cotterill (‘Skipper’)

  Lynam, Joe

  Lynam, May

  Lyons, Eric

  M.

  Macartney, Sir Mervyn: edits Architectural Review

  Macaulay, (Dame) Rose

  McCall, Margaret

  MacDonald, Ramsay

  Machen, Arthur; The Secret Glory

  Macmillan, Harold (later 1st Earl of Stockton)

  MacNeice, Louis: at Marlborough; C.S. Lewis dislikes; poetic style

  Maffey, Sir John (later 1st Baron Rugby)

  Magdalen College, Oxford

  Mallalieu, J.P.W. (Per)

  Margaret, Princess: visits JB; Elizabeth Cavendish as Lady-in-Waiting to; visits Armstrong-Jones in Rotherhithe Street; engagement and marriage to Armstrong-Jones; presents Duff Cooper prize to JB; as Chancellor of Keele University; JB’s attitude to; churchgoing

  Marlborough College: alumni; JB attends; JB makes TV film on

  Marshall, Sir John

  Martin, Peter and Dorothy

  Martyn, Edward

  Mary, Queen of George V

  Masefield, John

  Mathew, David, Archbishop of Apamea

  Mathew, Gervase

  Mauberley, Hugh Selwyn

  Mead, the see Wantage (the Mead)

  Menzies, Jill (‘Freckly Jill’): as JB’s secretary; on JB’s attachment to Elizabeth Cavendish

  Messel, Oliver

  Messel, Rudolf

  Metroland (TV film)

  Miller, Max

  Mirzoeff, Edward

  Mitford, Nancy: JB’s admiration for; and JB’s politics; and JB’s Admiralty post in war; letter from Waugh on JB’s beliefs; Christmas Pudding

  Mitford, Pamela

  Mitford, Thomas

  Mitford, Unity Valkyrie

  modernism: in poetry; in architecture

  Moor View (house), Edensor, Derbyshire

  Moore, Elizabeth

  Moore, George: Hail and Farewell

  Moore, Temple

  Mormons: Paul Betjeman joins

  Morrell, Lady Ottoline

  Morrice, Rev. R.W.

  Morris, May

  Morton, H.V.: In the Footsteps of the Master

  Mosley, Alexander

  Mosley, Diana, Lady (née Mitford; then Guinness): meets JB; JB corresponds with; engagement and marriage to Bryan Guinness; at Biddesden; on JB’s relations with sister Pamela; accompanies sister Unity to Germany; leaves Guinness for Mosley; admires JB’s genius; and Archie (teddy bear); JB’s relations with; visits JB at Farnborough; invites JB to Paris

  Mosley, Max

  Mosley, Sir Oswald: JB corresponds with; Diana Guinness meets and marries; politics; visits JB at Farnborough; attitude to adultery

  Moti (horse)

  Mottistone, Henry John Alexander Seely, 2nd Baron (Jack)

  Mountbatten, Admiral of the Fleet Louis, 1st Earl

  Mowl, Timothy: Stylistic Cold Wars

  Muggeridge, Malcolm

  Murdoch, (Dame) Iris

  Murray, John: publishes JB

  N.

  Naipaul, Sir Vidia S.: The Enigma of Arrival

  Nehru, Jawaharlal (Pandit)

  New House, Cusop, near Hay-on-Wye (Penelope’s cottage)

  Nicolson, (Sir) Harold

  Noel, Rev. Conrad

  Norton, William

  Nymans (house), Sussex

  O.

  Oakley, Joan and Roland

  Oaksey, John Laurence, 2nd Baron

  Oaksey, Victoria, Lady (née Dennistoun; ‘Tory’)

  Observer Corps: JB serves in

  Olivier, Laurence (later Baron)

  Osborne, John: friendship with JB; religious seriousness; Inadmissible Evidence; Look Back in Anger

  Oxford: in JB’s verse; JB’s affection for; see also Dragon School; Oxford University

  Oxford Diocesan Advisory Committee

  Oxford Movement

  Oxford Preservation Trust

  Oxford University: JB attends; post-First World War character

  Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS)

  P.

  Paget, Paul

  Pakenham, Frank see Longford, 7th Earl of

  Pakenham, Lady Mary

  Parker, Jim: sets JB poems to music

  Passion for Churches, A (TV film)

  Pater, Walter

  Peers, Charles

  Penning-Rowsell, Edmund

  Pepler, Father Conrad

  Perry, Lionel

  Peterson, Karl

  Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus

  Phipps, Simon, Bishop of Lincoln

  Piers Court, Stinchcombe, Gloucestershire

  Pink ’Un, The (Admiralty publication)

  Piper, Eileen (née Holding)

  Piper, John: background and career; friendship with JB; collaborates with JB on Shell Guides; writes for Architectural Review; friendship with Lancasters; baptised by Harton; church visiting; illustrates Collins Guide to English Parish Churches; friendship with Kenneth Clark; illustrates English, Scottish and Welsh Landscape; religious beliefs; and JB’s attachment to Patrick Cullinan; and JB’s campaign for knighthood for Comper; JB stays with; on corrupting effect of TV on JB and Kenneth Clark; Ingrams writes on; with JB in old age

  Piper, Myfanwy (née Evans): JB’s poems on; marriage; background; JB’s friendship with; baptised by Harton; urges JB to fulfil talent; on Lancasters; and JB’s absence in Ireland; religious beliefs; with JB in old age

  Plath, Sylvia

  Plomley, Roy

  Plunkett, Sir Horace: JB works for as secretary; and JB’s Quakerism

  Port Quin, Cornwall

  Pound, Ezra

  Powell, Anthony: at Oxford; on Bowra; on JB’s social ambitions; on Waugh-JB friendship; relations with JB; writes to JB; on Waugh as sadist; aspires to house with drive; Julian Jebb visits; on JB’s ‘whim of iron’; A Dance to the Music of Time

  Powell, Lady Violet

  Prawls (house), near Tenterden, Kent

  Pressdram Limited (company)

  Priestley, Joseph

  Prince, Joan (‘The Mistress’)

  Private Eye (magazine)

  Pryce-Jones, Alan (‘Bog’): at Oxford; on JB’s father’s funeral; army service; religious conversions; on cruise to Copenhagen; Elizabeth Cavendish proposes marriage to; friendship with JB; engages Pevsner to write for Times Literary Supplement; on death of friends; The Bonus of Laughter

  Pryce-Jones, Poppy

  public schools

  Purey-Cust, Peggy

  Pusey House, Oxford

  Pym family

  Q.

  Quakers (Society of Friends): JB’s membership

  Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas, 8th Marquess of

  Quennell, (Sir) Peter: and Bowra; on JB at Architectural Review; Randolph Churchill introduces to White’s Club; stays at Uffington

  R.

  Radnor Walk, Chelsea

  Rainbird, George (publisher)

  Ramsey, Michael, Archbishop of Canterbury

  Rawlings, Margaret

  Reade, Charles; The Cloister and the Hearth

  Reynolds, Sir Joshua

  Richards, Sir James M.

  Richards, Peggy (née Angus)

  Robinson, John, Bishop of Woolwich: Honest to God

  Rome: Berners’s house in

  Ross, Jennifer

  Rosse, Anne, Countess of (formerly Armstrong-Jones)

  Rosse, Laurence Michael Harvey Parsons, 6th Earl of

  Rossetti, Dante Gabriel

  Rotherhithe Street, London

  Rowse, A.L.

  Royal Fine Art Commission: JB serves on

  Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield

  Rugby, 1st Baron see Maffey, Sir John

  Ruskin, John

  Russell, Camilla see Sykes, Camilla

&nb
sp; Russell, George William (‘A.E.’)

  Russell, Sir John

  S.

  St Aloysius Church, Oxford

  St Bartholomew’s hospital, London: JB’s visiting at

  St Cyprian the Martyr church, London

  St Endellion’s church, Cornwall

  St Enodoc’s Church, Cornwall

  St Katherine Coleman church

  St Michael’s College, Tenbury, Worcestershire

  St Peter’s church, Vauxhall

  St Saviour’s church, Aberdeen Park, London

  Salisbury, Alice, Marchioness of

  Sambourne, Linley

  Sambourne, Roy

  Second World War: JB’s employment in

  Sedding, J.D.

  Seely & Paget (architects)

  Seymour, Laura

  Sezincote (house), Gloucestershire

  Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 9th Earl of

  Shakespeare, Jack

  Shakespeare, William: JB dislikes

  Shand, P[hilip] Morton

  Shell Guides: published by Faber; JB edits; Piper collaborates with JB on; JB rewrites Cornwall volume; Rainbird appropriates title

  Shell-Mex BP Company

  Shelley, Percy Bysshe

  Simon, Sir John

  Singh, Paddy

  Smyth-Piggot, Rev. John Hugh

  Snowdon, Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of: life in London; engagement and marriage to Princess Margaret

  Sparrow, John: at Oxford; checks JB’s poetry; remembers Basil Dufferin; friendship with JB; recognises Penelope’s gifts

  Spender (Sir) Stephen

  Spenser, Edmund

  Stamp, Gavin

  Staunton Harold church, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

  Stedall, Jonathan

  Steele, Rev. John Durno

  Steele, Tommy

  Steinbrecher, Paula

  Stephens, George

  Stock, Revd Victor

  Stockwood, Mervyn, Bishop of Southwark

  Stokes, Phoebe and Alan

  Stone, Rev. Dr Darwell

  Stonor, Oliver

  Stopes, Marie

  Strachey, Lytton

  Strickland, General Sir Peter

  Stuart, Simon

  Summer Fields school, Oxford

  Summerson, Sir John: on bombing of London; and Comper’s knighthood

  Sutherland, Graham

  Sutton, Randolph

  Sykes, Camilla (née Russell): JB’s attachment to; JB wishes to design cover for Mount Zion

  Sykes, Christopher

  Symons, Julian

  Synnott, Pierce

  T.

  Tasmania

  Taylor, Geoffrey

  Tennyson, Alfred, 1st Baron: on biography; In Memoriam

  Thomas, Lynam

  Thomas, M. Wynn

  Thomas, Peggy

  Thomas, R.S.; ‘Judgement Day’; The Stones of the Field

  Thompson, Rev. J.M.

  Thorold, Rev. Henry: Lincolnshire (Shell Guide)

  Thorpe House (school), Gerrard’s Cross

  Time and Tide: JB as literary adviser for

  Tower House, Kensington

  Townsend, Group Captain Peter

  Tracy, Honor

  Travers, Martin

  Travers, Sally

  Trebetherick, Cornwall; JB buys Treen (house)

  Tree, Lady Anne

  Truro Cathedral

  Tulira, County Galway

  Turgenev, Ivan

  Tynan, Katharine

  U.

  Uffington, Berkshire: Betjemans live in; Betjemans leave; see also Garrard’s Farm

  United States: JB in

  V.

  Victorian Society: founded

  Villiers-Stuart, Emily (formerly Lady Hemphill)

  Villiers-Stuart, Ion

  Voysey, Charles Francis Annesley

  W.

  Wain, John

  Walsham, John and Biddy

  Wantage convent (Community of St Mary the Virgin)

  Wantage (the Mead): Betjemans move to; JB’s life in; King Alfred’s Kitchen (bookshop/café); financial upkeep; Betjemans leave (1972)

  Warren, Sir Herbert

  Watson, Ronald

  Waugh, Auberon

  Waugh, Evelyn: and Bowra; relations with and view of JB; background; and Bryan Guinness; supposed affair with Penelope; wartime service; and JB’s move to Old Rectory, Farnborough; political views; on Betjeman children’s accents; and Penelope’s conversion to Roman Catholicism; attacks JB’s religious beliefs; depicts Penelope as Empress Helena; JB praises; Penelope asks to discontinue religious letters to JB; home at Combe Florey; JB gives Burges washstand to; mental disturbance; JB conciliates; love of grandeur; Decline and Fall; Helena; The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold; Sword of Honour (trilogy)

  Waugh, Teresa

  Weekend Telegraph: JB writes for

  Weinstock, Arnold (later Baron)

  Wells, John

  West Dean Park, Sussex

  Westminster Abbey: in JB play; JB’s memorial service in

  Wheeler, John

  Wheeler, Peter

  Where on Earth? (TV programme)

  Whistler, Rex

  White, Terence de Vere

  White, William

  Wicklow, 8th Earl of see Clonmore, William Forward-Howard, Baron

  Wilde, Oscar

  Willesden Churchyard

  Williams, Charles

  Williams, Harry; True Resurrection; The True Wilderness

  Wilson, Mary, Lady

  Wing, Buckinghamshire: proposed airport

  Wintringham, Margaret

  Wood, Christopher

  Woodyer, Henry

  Woolf, Leonard

  Woolston, Katherine

  Wordsworth, Andrew

  Wright, Nancy

  Wright, Ronald Hughes: friendship with JB; becomes Roman Catholic

  Y.

  Yeats, William Butler: poetic quality; on Ireland; JB meets; (ed.) Oxford Book of Modern Verse

  Yorke, Henry (Henry Green)

  ALSO BY A.N. WILSON

  FICTION

  The Sweets of Pimlico

  Unguarded Hours

  Kindly Light

  The Healing Art

  Who Was Oswald Fish?

  Wise Virgin

  Scandal

  Gentlemen in England

  Love Unknown

  Stray

  The Vicar of Sorrows

  Dream Children

  My Name Is Legion

  A Jealous Ghost

  The Lampitt Chronicles

  Incline Our Hearts

  A Bottle in the Smoke

  Daughters of Albion

  Hearing Voices

  A Watch in the Night

  NON-FICTION

  The Laird of Abbotsford

  The Life of John Milton

  Hilaire Belloc

  Penfriends from Porlock

  Tolstoy

  C. S. Lewis: A Biography

  God’s Funeral

  The Victorians

  Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her

  London: A Short History

  After the Victorians

  FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX

  19 Union Square West, New York 10003

  Copyright © 2006 by A. N. Wilson

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in 2006 by Hutchinson, Great Britain

  Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First American edition, 2006

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reproduce lines from the following:

  Collected Poems by John Betjeman ©The Estate of John Betjeman 1955, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1968, 1970, 1979, 1981, 1982, 2001. Reproduced by permission of John Murray (Publishers), a division of Hodder Headline

  ‘Seventeenth Century Lyric’, ‘The Garden City’, ‘St Aloysius Church, Oxford’, the Shell Guides and other writings by John Betjeman are reproduced by kind permission of the John Betjeman Estate

  J
ohn Betjeman, Letters: Volume One: 1926 to 1951 and Letters: Volume Two: 1951–1984, edited by Candida Lycett Green, reprinted by kind permission of Methuen Publishing Limited, copyright ©The Estate of John Betjeman

  The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc., copyright © 1982 by Evelyn Esta Waugh

  Memories by Maurice Bowra, reprinted by kind permission of Wadham College, Oxford

  ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’, reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, Volume I: The Poems (revised), edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1928 by the Macmillan Company; copyright renewed © 1956 by Georgie Yeats

  Lines from Patrick Leigh Fermor’s address at the unveiling of the memorial plaque to Betjeman in 1985, reproduced by permission of Patrick Leigh Fermor

  The Secret Glory (Copyright © Arthur Machen) by permission of A.M. Heath & Co Ltd

  Lines for Christmas Sing-Song by W. H. Auden from an unpublished and undated letter to John Betjeman, British Library (shelfmark: Add. MS 71646 f14), used by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. All rights reserved. These lines have been published in a slightly different form in The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Plays and Other Dramatic Writings, 1928–1938 by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Princeton University Press, 1988

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

  ISBN-13: 978-0-374-11198-4

  ISBN-10: 0-374-11198-7

  www.fsgbooks.com

  eISBN 9781466893719

  First eBook edition: April 2015