Uncollected Poems

About the book

Sir John Betjeman, CBE (28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984) was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack". He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1972 until his death. The poems in this volume had never been collected in book form before and most had never previously been printed. Many had lain forgotten amongst papers which John Betjeman disposed of when he moved from Cloth Fair, and which later found a welcoming home in the University of Victoria, British Columbia, where they were located. The selection is unique in that it contains poems from all periods of Sir John's creative life and from all aspects of his chracteristic originality - affectionate satire, grimness and gaiety, kindly but sharp social comment, personified landscapes that are Betjeman at his most felicitous, and the poetic subtlety that pounces on a moment of time and place and fixes it forever.