Trains and Buttered Toast: Selected Radio TalksEccentric, sentimental and homespun, John Betjeman's passions were mostly self-taught. He saw his country being devastated by war and progress and he waged a private war to save it. His only weapons were words--the poetry for which he is best known and, even more influential, the radio talks that first made him a phenomenon. From fervent pleas for provincial preservation to humoresques on eccentric vicars and his own personal demons, Betjeman's talks combined wit, nostalgia and criticism in a way that touched the soul of his listeners from the 1930s to the 1950s. Now, collected in book form for the first time, his broadcasts represent one of the most compelling archives of 20th-century broadcasting. |
Contents
VICTORIANA | 19 |
Victorian Provincial Life 1949 | 33 |
A Hundred Years of Architecture in Wessex 1950 | 39 |
Copyright | |
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Alderney architect architecture Baring-Gould Barnes Bath beautiful bells Betjeman Blisland Bodmin Moor Bournemouth brick bridge Bristol broadcast buildings built called Cardiff Castle carved Castle cathedral century chancel chapel church cliffs coast coloured Cornish Cornwall cottages Devon door elms England Home Service English Exeter garden Geoffrey Grigson Georgian glass Gothic Grigson Highworth hills houses huge hymn Ilfracombe J. C. Pennethorne Hughes Kelmscott lanes live London look Lord Marzials miles Morris never Newbolt Oxford Padstow parish park pews Plymouth poem poet poetry Port Isaac Producer Programme Pugin railway road roofs round seaside Sidmouth slate sort St Petroc stand stone streets stucco style suburbs Swindon talk Tennyson there's thing Toplady tower town trees ugly Ventnor Victorian Victorian architecture village walk walls Waterloo Bridge West Country West of England wind