Betjeman

It's the birthday of poet John Betjeman (1906) (books by this author). He was born in London, the only child of a furniture maker. He wrote his first poem at nine; at 10, he gave a copy of his work "The Best of Betjeman" to one of his instructors, who happened to be T.S. Eliot. He took his first trip to Oxford the following year, and became inspired by the architecture of its churches and other buildings. Later in life he would campaign for the preservation of Victorian and Edwardian buildings as a founding member of the Victorian Society. He published both his first book of verse (Mount Zion) and his first book on architecture (Ghastly Good Taste) in 1933. In his career as a poet, he often wrote with a sense of nostalgia for the Britain of the recent past, capturing it as it was disappearing; he also satirized progress for its own sake. His work was very popular among the unsettled post-World War II Britons who longed for a simpler time. He also published several guidebooks on British counties and a collection of essays called First and Last Loves (1952) about places and buildings. He was instrumental in saving the Victorian façade of the St. Pancras railway station from demolition, and a statue of the poet — depicted as gazing up in admiration of the architecture — now stands in the station at platform level.