Sir John Betjeman (1906–84) remains, surely, the most popular of ‘contemporary’ British poets. That is, I believe, a fact worth taking seriously in a democratic society. In his lifetime, Betjeman became a representative figure for the many who feel that poetry should be readily understandable, rooted in common perceptions, and formal in rhythm and rhyme. In this regard, he became not only the most accepted Poet Laureate since Tennyson but also a prolific radio and television ‘Personality ’.

However, Betjeman the public figure, and even Betjeman the architectural and cultural commentator, should not obscure for readers his true vocation and commitment. John Betjeman was first and last a poet. And he was recognized as this by such contrastive poetic figures as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Philip Larkin. The comparative lack of academic-critical interest in his work thus reflects more on the pretensions of criticism and literary theory than on the quality of Betjeman's contribution.

This introductory book – written for general readers as much as for students – will be focused on Betjeman's poetry itself: any critical or theoretical comment will emerge out of an attentive consideration of the poems. ‘I was a poet,’ Betjeman asserts, concerning a youthful failure to shoot rabbits in Summoned by Bells (SBB 21). This short study takes the poet at his own estimation.

For this reason, the biographical sketch, text, and bibliography are primarily concerned with Betjeman's poetic career. No doubt Bevis Hillier 's definitive biography will be completed soon. But the poetry will remain the chief reason why such books will be of particular interest. And, as Chapter 1 indicates, the popularity of Betjeman's poems has much to do with his willingness to confine his writing to conventional verse forms that remain the generally accepted norm of English poetic practice.

At the same time, the poet was content to employ wit, compassion, and common sense rather than furthering the intellectuality, austerity, and satiric extremism that Modernism had pioneered. Betjeman's basic style represents a different kind of rappel à l 'ordre – begun in the wildly politicized 1930s; and it set a precedent in the 1940s for the coming emphases of the Movement from the 1950s onwards, themselves, no doubt, an English ‘empirical’ reaction, rooted in Second World War isolation, to European left-wing posturing (Brecht, Sartre, Althusser, and so on) as the cold war became consolidated.