The Undesired Result 
Gillian Darley
The dust jacket of the final volume of Bevis Hillier’s epic life of John Betjeman shows the poet laureate seized by giggles. In this lengthy coda to Hillier’s authorised biography Betjeman appears in many lights, but he’s rarely carefree. ‘Nothing frightens me more than the thought of dying,’ he told a friend in 1958. He was 52, had a well-tried Christian faith and would live another 25 years. Betjeman sits most comfortably alongside the Goons or Tony Hancock, quirky depressives of the wireless age whose voices speak to a disenchanted, disconnected world, laughing it all off until the red light in the studio goes out.
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Gillian Darley’s Villages of Vision is published in a revised edition this month.
Other articles by this contributor:
See the Sights! · Rediscovering Essex
Don’t teach me · Ernö Goldfinger
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