Being with John Betjeman

Andrew Geddes recounts the long affair between his  mother Margie and the great poet, and the passion of  his letters to her over many decades

My mother first met John Betjeman in the summer of 1929. She was 20 and he was a master at Heddon Court prep school in Potters Bar where her brothers Dick and John Addis were pupils. Together with her parents, she had driven over from Primrose Hill in an open landau (my grandparents did not seem to be aware of the invention of the motor car) to attend the school sports day. It was a hot summer’s day and they sat in deck chairs on the edge of the games field watching the sports. A slim young master with large brown eyes and sticky-out teeth caught my mother’s attention. He was kneeling to adjust the high jump, and as she wrote later, ‘Quite suddenly in a flash I was aware that this was no ordinary person, but someone very special.