John Betjeman reads Favourite Poems

amuletts — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 23:45:32 +0000

“In a 1962 radio interview he told teenage questioners that he could not write about ‘abstract things’, preferring places and faces. Philip Larkin wrote of Betjeman’s work, “how much more interesting & worth writing about (his) subjects are than most other modern poets, I mean, whether so-and-so achieves some metaphysical inner unity is not really so interesting as the overbuilding of rural Middlesex.”

1. False Security 3:04
2. Hunter Trials 2:12
3. Seaside Golf 1:33
4. Norfolk 1:33
5. Sunday in Ireland 3:03
6. Remorse 1:28
7. Youth and Age on Beaulieu River 3:24
8. A Subaltern’s Love Song 4:03
9. Reproof Deserved (After the Lecture) 2:31
10. Business Women 2:53
11. Song of a Night-Club Proprietress (AKA ‘Sun & Fun’) 2:28
12. The Licorice Fields at Pontefract 2:49
13. Our Padre 1:07
14. Indoor Games Near Newbury 3:02
15. How to Get on in Society 0:56
16. Late Flowering Lust 1:14
17. Middlesex 1:47
18. Harrow-on-the-Hill 1:36
19. Trebetherick 2:01
20. The Arrest of Oscar Wilde 1:48
21. In Memoriam Walter Ramsden 2:09
22. Devonshire Street, W.1 1:54
23. In a Bath Teashop 0:27
24. The Irish Unionist’s Farewell 1:52
25. A Lincolnshire Church 2:50
26. Henley-on-Thames 1:17
27. Diary of a Church Mouse 3:05
28. In the Public Gardens 0:55
29. Eunice 2:13
30. The Last of Her Order (AKA ‘Felixstowe’) 2:32
31. Matlock Bath

Bonus Tracks read by Famous Voices & Admirers

32. To My Son Aged Eight read by Dylan Thomas 3:02
(includes introduction to Betjeman to New York audiences)
33. On a Portrait of a Deaf Man read by Dylan Thomas 1:30
34. Death at Leamington read by Robert Donat 1:27
35. Christmas read by Robert Donat 2:55

John Betjeman – Alto CD

John Betjeman reads Favourite Poems