Fantastic Mr Fox

Sand in the Sandwiches is the perfect show for those who feel the West End should be an intellectual funfair. It sets out to amuse, surprise, divert, uplift and nothing more. Edward Fox’s biographical portrait of John Betjeman has a smattering of his most famous poems ingeniously woven into the narrative. Fox knows his stuff. His shrill, elongated upper-middle-class accent is 99 per cent impersonation and 1 per cent exaggeration. He reminds us that when Betjeman said ‘Edwardian’ he rhymed the second syllable with card, not sword.

From early boyhood Betjeman knew that poetry would be his trade. Aged 14, he read the sonnets of Oscar Wilde’s chum, Bosie, and judged them superior to Shakespeare’s. He sent the ageing poet an admiring letter. ‘To my surprise, I got a reply, requesting a photograph.’ (Fox gets a big laugh on ‘requesting a photograph’.) Betjeman’s exchange of messages with Bosie was discovered by his horrified father, who decreed that they should ‘go for a walk’. (Big laugh on ‘go for a walk’.) Bosie, young Betjeman was informed, could never be a suitable pen pal. ‘He’s a bugger. Do you know what that is? Two men work themselves up into such a state of mutual admiration that one of them shoves his piss-pipe up the other’s arse. What do you think of that?’ Quite a lot, as it happened. Betjeman enjoyed a few homosexual dalliances at Oxford, where he and Auden enjoyed unearthing homoerotic poetry by ‘fin-de-siècle pederasts’. Later Betjeman married the daughter of Field Marshal Lord Chetwode. The old boy warmed to his son-in-law but he was concerned that the right note should be struck within the family circle. ‘You can’t call me “father” as I’m not your father. “Sir” is too formal. “Philip” is too informal. You’d better call me field marshal.’