Description
“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