“The quickest way to start a punch-up between two British literary critics,” Philip Larkin suggested, “is to ask their opinion of the poems of John Betjeman.” I know what he means. In 1960, I bought Summoned by Bells, Betjeman’s verse autobiography, and I placed the hard- back proudly on the bookshelf in my under- graduate rooms. Everyone who came in pointed at it and laughed.
“Betjeman?”
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