Sir John Betjeman

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy five, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

Our castaway this week is the Poet Laureate and the first British poet since Tennyson to get into the bestseller lists, Sir John Betchman.

Presenter0:40

First and a very important question, could you endure extended lonesiness?

Presenter0:44

Yes, if I had a certainty that there was somebody with me, even if I didn't see them.

Presenter0:52

Do you consider yourself a gregarious man, ordinarily?

Presenter0:55

Yes, not a party men not much good when there's a large crowd two or three people.

Presenter1:01

Are you musical?

Presenter1:03

No, I was always told by my parents I wasn't musical, because I couldn't sing in tune.

Presenter1:09

What would you want music to do for you on the island? Recapture the past?

Presenter1:15

Tunes and go well with the words when there were words.

Presenter1:21

And rhythm.

Presenter1:23

What's the first one you've chosen?

Presenter1:25

Bach's second suite played by Raymond Leppard and Richard Aidney, Richard Aidney at the flute.

Presenter1:32

It's the kind of beautiful music that's much better than that awful stuff they play in lifts and in hotels, Musack or Musak or whatever it's called.

Presenter1:43

And it's a sound that you have to stop and listen to.

Presenter2:46

Bach's suite number two in B minor, the English Chamber Orchestra, with Richard Adenay and Raymond Lepard. What's your second choice?

Presenter2:56

My favourite song, I think, Cole Porter's Let's Do It, sung by Ella FitzGerald.

Presenter3:03

The perfect union of words and music.

Speaker 13:06

Folks

Speaker 13:08

In Siam do

Presenter3:10

Do it.

Presenter3:12

Think of Siamese twins, some odd teens without means, do it

Presenter3:25

People saying in Boston even B

Speaker 13:29

Please do it, let's do it, let's fall.

Presenter3:37

Ella Fitzgerald.

Presenter3:39

Are you a Londoner, John? Yes. Born here.

Presenter3:43

and uh lived here all my life. Betchaman, of course, is a Dutch name, isn't it? Dutch name. Came over end of the eighteenth century, I think in the grocery, but possibly in the sugar.

Presenter3:57

You've been particularly interested in church architecture since very early on.

Presenter4:02

We know you are a religious man. Was it your religion which led you to the churches, or the churches which led you to your religion? Oh, the churches led me always moved by eye and ear.

Speaker 14:09

Or the

Presenter4:13

And I've always preferred them to anywhere else. And another very nice thing about church is, you can be on your own.

Presenter4:22

You were at school at Marlborough not very happily.

Presenter4:25

Yes. And then in Oxford very happily. Yes, very.

Presenter4:29

But you took no degree? No.

Presenter4:32

Despite which you got your first job as a master at a prep school. Were you a good master?

Presenter4:37

Yeah.

Presenter4:38

Not very. Couldn't keep order. The great art of being a schoolmaster is keeping order. And you have to show off it's really a solo turn on the halls every morning early until lunch time.

Presenter4:52

Was to become a poet a conscious and definite ambition? Did you say to yourselves in so many words, I'm going to be a poet?

Presenter4:59

Yes, as early as I can remember.

Presenter5:02

I always preferred

Presenter5:04

Poetry to prose, and I still do.

Presenter5:07

A number of odd jobs as a young man, one rather unlikely one in an insurance office.

Presenter5:13

Yes, I was put on at Lloyd's with a firm called Sedgwick Collins. I had no idea what I was doing went about and got things signed at desks, and was kept waiting by different sadists.

Speaker 15:13

Yes.

Presenter5:26

Then you had a job on the Architectural Review. Now that must have been up your street, surely. It was marvellous, and that was done like everything was done in those days, through friends. Mhm. Why did you leave it?

Presenter5:38

Uh, not enough money. Got married, had to make enough.

Presenter5:42

to keep things going. Yes. And you became a film critic? Yes, that was to get more money on the Evening Standard. Film critic wasn't possibly the right description. It was writing um

Presenter5:57

about the films in a congratulatory way so as to keep the advertisements in, as film advertisements were then very important.

Presenter6:07

And then came the war, the Ministry of Information, and something rather secret at the Admiralty.

Presenter6:15

Uh yes.

Presenter6:17

Not very secret at the Admiralty, but rather more secret.

Presenter6:20

As a result of the Ministry of Information. Well, you always got the fleet to the right place at the right time, as as far as you know.

Presenter6:28

Yes. Well, no, I didn't know what I was doing there either, any more than I did at Lloyd's. That's our record number three. What's that to be?

Presenter6:37

I think the best voice in the world.

Presenter6:41

Janet Baker.

Presenter6:43

Singing Handel's Lago.

Presenter7:45

Janet Baker.

Presenter7:47

And since the war you've lived a freelance life, books, broadcasting, journalism.

Presenter7:52

Let's take books first.

Presenter7:54

Books on architecture in the countryside. You have a remarkable knowledge of Britain, haven't you?

Presenter8:00

I don't know, but I've always enjoyed my own country more than any other, because I can speak the language and I know what sort of people live in what sort of houses.

Presenter8:09

guide books, books on ports and harbours and towns and churches. You have, of course, a special love of of railways which must have added a zest to your travels. Does that love extend into the present day of

Presenter8:23

Intercity, or is it only the the railway of steam trains and Dilton Marsh Hall that you really love?

Speaker 18:29

Rel

Presenter8:30

Oh, I like both. I'm very fond of the new fast intercity trains. They're very comfortable.

Presenter8:38

I wish Euston could have remained as it was. Yes, indeed. You fought a gallant battle for the preservation of the arch, didn't you? Yes, and lost.

Presenter8:49

One of your book titles put a new phrase into the language, one of your early books, ghastly good taste.

Presenter8:56

One hears that banded about quite a lot now.

Presenter8:59

Yes, it was about when everything was becoming very restrained and pastel coloured, and Sweden was all the rage.

Presenter9:10

and the Stockholm Town Hall.

Presenter9:13

All awfully good, really. I now come right round to seeing that that sort of thing's much nicer than.

Presenter9:18

Uh Battle of Britain Festival Grey.

Presenter9:22

You were almost a a pioneer in broadcasting. You started in Savoy Hill. I did, yes. In comic turn, which was a dead failure.

Presenter9:31

Well since then, so many talks and discussions and panel shows and features. I remember one wartime programme of yours called How to Look at a Town, which I found fascinating at the time, and I've used its precepts ever since, whenever I found myself in a strange town with a limited time to look round it.

Presenter9:49

It remained in my mind very clearly.

Presenter9:53

Was it about going and buying postcards? Yes. That was one of the first steps. And then to get away from the station, because that would have been built out of the town.

Presenter10:04

Yes.

Presenter10:05

And there would be streets connected with British victories at the time the railways came to the town, Incom and Terrace and things like that.

Speaker 110:11

Down here

Speaker 110:12

Things like that.

Presenter10:15

Station Road.

Presenter10:17

But in the centre of the town, narrow lanes.

Presenter10:21

Giving views.

Presenter10:23

Of two sides of the church.

Presenter10:27

Always see a a a a country church or a town church in an old street. You can always tell it's never flat on, it's always two sides of the tower.

Presenter10:38

And of course you've you have been responsible for some delightful programmes on the box in recent years, the British Sunday, I remember, and Metroland, which was an extraordinary success.

Presenter10:49

But it's never me who makes those teleprogrammes. It's always the producer and the electricians and the sound recordists and and it's really team work, and that's why I like doing it. Um I get the credit.

Presenter11:04

And they get the blame.

Presenter11:07

What are you working on at the moment?

Presenter11:10

Trying to write

Presenter11:12

Some words to music that's already composed, and I don't know whether I can do it.

Presenter11:17

It ought really to be the other way round. Yes. Gilbert produced the words first, and Sullivan came along very late in the day.

Presenter11:27

It's said that you've done more than any other man for the preservation and conservation of the worth while material things o of the past. You have indeed been a thorn on the side of

Presenter11:37

developers and and planners.

Presenter11:40

Well, it's very kind of you to say so, Roy.

Presenter11:43

I do mind changing things, because I think when people pull down things you've known all your life, they're hacking away part of your soul.

Presenter11:56

Let's get on to music again. What's number four to be?

Presenter12:00

Oh, a place I'm very fond of Harrow on the Hill. I wasn't at Harrow, but I somehow think I was there, and I think the songs of Harrow are fearfully good. And there's one about the bathing place called Ducker, which is the most wonderful waltz tune.

Sir John Betjeman12:28

A pair of band strokes.

Speaker 212:32

Uh

Sir John Betjeman12:32

In the world. Uh

Speaker 212:36

This is not a day to swell

Sir John Betjeman12:36

This is not the day.

Speaker 212:40

Cross your book and then away.

Speaker 212:44

Don't know is the old

Presenter12:52

DACHAR BY THACH OF HERES GOOL.

Presenter12:56

About your poetry, John, you have a simple, homely, witty, clear style which is easily appreciated. Does it involve a tremendous amount of of fussing to achieve that clarity?

Presenter13:08

I suppose it does. I say it out loud to myself when walking about, and when in trains, and lying in the bath, until I've got it round in the right order.

Presenter13:20

Yes, it takes hours, days.

Speaker 113:21

Hours

Presenter13:23

Because it reads as if it came immediately into your mind.

Presenter13:27

Which poets influenced you most as a young man?

Presenter13:31

William Blake first.

Presenter13:34

Nursery rhymes, then William Blake

Presenter13:38

Then Keats

Presenter13:40

Lee Hunt

Presenter13:43

And most of all, Tennyson.

Presenter13:47

When do you write your poetry? Do you say I'm going to take a couple of days off to write some verse? Or is it something that happens in a train? I wish I could. You're quite right. It's what happens in a train, or driving a motor car, or being driven in a car. A line occurs, and then you build up on it.

Presenter14:05

You're a very severe self-critic. You've rejected a great deal of your published work which you didn't want in your collected poems.

Presenter14:15

Yes, I've often done that. I don't think I'm much good. I think I'm just lucky.

Presenter14:19

What were your feelings on being appointed Poet, Laureate and Ordinary to Her Majesty, in 1972? I was very pleased.

Presenter14:28

Uh because I like

Presenter14:31

The idea of monarchy?

Presenter14:33

It goes on whatever happens to a government.

Presenter14:38

It consists of civilized people who do their work very well.

Presenter14:44

And I'm

Presenter14:45

Honoured and pleased to be connected with it.

Presenter14:48

Recently you've recorded some of your verses to a background of pop music. Did you find that worked? Enjoyed it very much. It wasn't my idea. They came along, a very good composer, and then some other pop people came, a wonderful man with gold hair down to his shoulders and one earring, and they played the things over on a little portable harmonium to start with. And then we went to a studio in Willsdon High Street. I'm always pleased to see Willsden again. And the orchestra was conducted. And then I stood in a box and the conductor waved his baton when I was to speak.

Presenter15:33

I enjoyed myself a lot. Yes. What was the record called? One was called Banana Blush.

Presenter15:40

That's the name of an ice there used to be in in soda fountains in lions' establishments in the nineteen twenties, and the other was called Late Flowering Love.

Presenter15:54

about an old man's aches for the beauties of youth.

Presenter16:01

Let's have record number five.

Presenter16:03

This is John Gilgood saying the Seven Ages of Man speech from as you like it. It seems to me the shortest way

Presenter16:14

possible of saying a lot.

Sir John Betjeman16:17

All the worlds are stayed.

Sir John Betjeman16:20

and all the men and women merely players.

Sir John Betjeman16:24

They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

Sir John Betjeman16:33

At first the infant, mulling and puking in the nurse's arms,

Sir John Betjeman16:38

And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school.

Sir John Betjeman16:46

and then a lover, sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress Eyebrow.

Sir John Betjeman16:52

Then the soldier, full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.

Sir John Betjeman17:04

And then the Justice, in fair round belly, with good cape on lined, With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, Full of wise sores and modern instances, And so he plays his part.

Presenter17:18

Sir John Guilgood.

Presenter17:19

Let's go straight on to your next record.

Presenter17:23

I've always enjoyed Music Hall. Luckily I knew it in the nineteen twenties when s a great many of the great stars were on in London.

Presenter17:33

And I love the rapport there is between the comedian comedians were best of all the comedian and his audience. And a master for me was Max Miller at the Met, Edgware Road, now a car park site.

Speaker 217:51

I went home the other night. There's a funny thing.

Speaker 217:56

And I went in the back way, through the kitchen, through the dining room, the drawing room, and there's a fella standing there, not a stitch on.

Speaker 218:03

Can you imagine that lady?

Speaker 218:07

How's your memory girl?

Speaker 218:12

He hasn't got a stitch up. I called the wife in. I said, who's this? She said, don't lose your temper, Miller. Don't go raving mad.

Speaker 218:19

I said I'm only asking a fair question, who is it? She said he's a nudist and he's coming to use a phone. That's a clever one from the YPA.

Presenter18:27

Max at the Met

Presenter18:29

Now, with your knowledge of architecture and design, we shall expect to find, when you are rescued from this island, that you have handsome and spacious living quarters. Are you good with your hands?

Presenter18:40

Very bad indeed. Oh dear, that's disappointing.

Presenter18:43

Um

Presenter18:45

What you going to live on?

Presenter18:46

What you will do is.

Presenter18:50

Any fruit that's growing I shall pick. I can pick fruit. What about fishing? Don't like fishing, can't take them off the hook.

Presenter18:59

Would you try to escape? No, I don't think so. All one wants is company, even if it's unseen.

Presenter19:07

Record number seven.

Presenter19:10

This is Stanford.

Presenter19:12

Who's not fashionable? Stanford in G?

Presenter19:16

the Magnificat. I always like something that's not fashionable and forgotten and is beautiful.

Presenter19:25

and it's sung by the best of choirs.

Presenter19:28

King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

Presenter19:31

The most beautiful college chapel in Britain.

Presenter19:35

The best bit of architecture you could wish to see. That and Peterborough Cathedral, the best places you can go to from London and get back the same evening.

Sir John Betjeman19:47

My son before And my spirit have reduced in current

Speaker 120:01

Oh, I suppose.

Sir John Betjeman20:01

Uh

Sir John Betjeman20:17

And from hands of all Gemini's nature.

Speaker 120:26

Yeah.

Sir John Betjeman20:37

Is we have a flag in the fight?

Sir John Betjeman20:42

I can't see it.

Presenter20:46

Stanford's Magnificat and G by the choir of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

Presenter20:52

Which brings us to your last record. What's that to be?

Presenter20:55

I think

Presenter20:56

Another too little regarded genius, Douglas Byng, whom I remember in the night clubs,

Presenter21:05

In the war, keeping everybody's spirits up.

Presenter21:09

A wonderful artist.

Presenter21:12

Nice and coarse. I don't think that matters a bit.

Presenter21:16

And I think the one I like best is, because I always find Scotland very funny as well as very beautiful.

Presenter21:25

Flora MacDonald.

Presenter21:27

Flora MacDonald, Florida MacDonald, heavy with haggis and dripping with dew.

Presenter21:33

Morn is the night you were oot in the heather, Bending the bracken with the uncharlie stew.

Presenter21:39

For Laura MacDonald, for Laura MacDonald, Lucy when John Corner and Day to go forth, Clutchily Skilton went over the border, oh well over the border, Old Flo MacDonald

Speaker 121:52

The hell.

Presenter21:54

Douglas Byn.

Presenter21:56

If you could take only one of your eight discs, which would it be?

Presenter22:01

I think I could hear indefinitely.

Presenter22:05

JANET BAKER SINGING HANDL

Presenter22:08

and one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.

Presenter22:14

Palgrave's Golden Treasury, without a doubt.

Presenter22:18

And one luxury?

Presenter22:22

A half bottle of champagne every morning.

Presenter22:26

after breakfast. That should be arranged. And thank you, Sir John Benjamin, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you for letting me have them.

Presenter22:36

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 122:44

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio form.