Collected Poems made publishing history when it first appeared, and has now sold more than two million copies, to an ever-growing readership.
Displaying the poet’s skillful use of 19th-century poetic models, the collection was enthusiastically received by many critics when first published in 1958. A Times Literary Supplement reviewer stated that Betjeman’s poems were ‘a pleasant change from the shapeless and unarticulated matter . . . offered us by so many of his contemporaries. For Mr. Betjeman is a born versifier, ingenious and endlessly original; his echoes of Tennyson and Crabb, Praed and Father Prout, are never mere pastiche; and he is always attentive to the sound of his words, the run of his lines, the shape of his stanzas.’
This newly expanded edition includes Betjeman’s verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells. With a new Introduction by Andrew Motion, Collected Poems is the definitive Betjeman companion.
A Salute to Betjeman
On Hampstead Heath a leisured stroll To calm the mind and soothe the soul – North London’s take on Flatford Mill – The air is thick with heat, and still, The sunshine gilds the two...
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