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John Betjeman: The Biography

A not so cuddly teddy bear

Bevis Hillier
John Murray, 590pp, £18.99,

Sam Leith

Wednesday, 16th August 2006

The other great casualty was Betjeman’s son Paul, known through his childhood as ‘the Powlie’ or, teasingly but painfully, as ‘It’. His relationship with John was, in some ways, a yet fiercer recapitulation of John’s angry and resentful relationship with his own father, Ernest. The estrangement was deep, exacerbated by Paul’s move to the United States and conversion to Mormonism, and lasted to the end of Betjeman’s life. Wilson managed to interview Paul Betjeman in the course of his research and the hurt still seems fresh.

I asked Paul whether he had felt unappreciated; whether he was angry with John and Penelope for being bad parents. His face contorted as he recalled it all. ‘Calling me It. That . . . I minded so much about that. I could not even articulate it to myself for years. It was not a question of them not appreciating me. It wasn’t a question . . . he wanted to keep me down.’ He forced his palm against the arm of his chair so forcefully that he might have broken it. ‘Down. That is where he wanted me.’

Hillier ends with Betjeman’s death and his rain-swept funeral; Wilson, perhaps tellingly, with Penelope’s, in the course of a longed for trip to the Himalayas in search of temples. She was cremated in an improvised Christian/Hindu ceremony, and her ashes were mingled with flower petals and scattered in the Kulu Valley. The end of a long struggle. Both books had me sniffling.

Formidably researched, sympathetic and very well written, Hillier’s is the better of two extremely good books because it is the fuller portrait. But it is not complete. Wilson’s, though narrower, is also essential. His focus on the struggles he sees as the core of Betjeman’s poetry and his life is convincing, and its expression heartfelt. Anyone who cares about Betjeman should have both volumes on the shelf — even if, until such time as the two authors manage to patch it up, they have to be separated by some sort of demilitarised zone. A copy of Summoned by Bells should do the trick.

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