{"id":24636,"date":"2024-11-09T22:45:40","date_gmt":"2024-11-09T22:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=24636"},"modified":"2024-11-09T23:17:29","modified_gmt":"2024-11-09T23:17:29","slug":"book-review-trains-buttered-toast-john-betjeman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=24636","title":{"rendered":"BOOK REViEW: Trains & Buttered Toast, John Betjeman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I\u2019ve been trying to get into Betjeman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quite possibly mostly on account of Rick Stein quoting or mentioning him so often. Teresa watches Stein most days!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I bought this book, quite recently. It\u2019s a collection of radio talks he did, broadcast on the BBC (of course!), from before during and just after WWII.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d have to say that I\u2019m somewhat disappointed. Not totally surprisingly so, to be candid. He\u2019s a dotty old duffer, for sure. C. S. Lewis, who tutored him at Oxford, called him \u2018this idle prig\u2019!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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JB, at the BBBC, as Count Arthur would say.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first x chapters\/talks are on provincial West Country towns. Then there\u2019s a bunch on the loose theme of eccentrics. And I\u2019m currently wading through a segment on religious folk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like poetry and the arts, and I\u2019m interested in architecture, as Betjeman is, as a kind of index on our current cultural state. I share some of his views, on all of these things. But by no means all. Far from it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to his poetic and linguistic skills, he occasionally puts things very nicely – or at least amusingly – such as when he describes London as \u2018that vile octopus\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But his rather wet almost effete old-fashioned tweediness can grate a bit, at times. And I find his very dewy-eyed conservatism in relation to Christianity pretty baffling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, I\u2019m glad I bought the book. And I am, on balance, enjoying reading it. I guess I ought to go to his poetry next? That\u2019s possibly a better bet? We shall see\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Just ordered this, cheap, off Amazon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The above, illustrated by David Genitalman, looks worth a punt. I think I also have this (somewhere?):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve been trying to get into Betjeman. Quite possibly mostly on account of Rick Stein quoting or mentioning him so often. Teresa watches Stein most days! So I bought this book, quite recently. It\u2019s a collection of radio talks he did, broadcast on the BBC (of course!), from before during and just after WWII. I\u2019d … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “BOOK REViEW: Trains & Buttered Toast, John Betjeman”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-6pm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24636"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24636"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24643,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24636\/revisions\/24643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}