Betjeman is probably the epitome of the affable old duffer, but this anthology, edited with tender loving care by his daughter, presents a more rounded view, from delightfully eccentric early short stories such as the saga of the obscure Irish peers, "Lord Mount Prospect", to his hilarious, groundbreaking film reviews for the Evening Standard of the 1930s ("Films were gradually turning me dotty. I used to come out of a press showing and caress the bricks in the street, grateful that they were three-dimensional. If I saw a thuggish-looking man with his hat pulled down over his face, I expected to be shot in the back . . .") Both strands, of course, pale into insignificance when placed alongside his eloquent pleas on behalf of unloved places and buildings, and there are plenty of those here, from a 1943 address which must have given the shivers to any Church of Ireland clergymen who were planning to remove box-pews and install radiators, to 1973's spirited BBC film about the lost spirit of London, Metro-land. Entertaining, provocative and civilised from start to finish.
Arminta Wallace