H UGH M ASSINGBERD A. N. Wilson’s brilliant Betjeman (Hutchinson, £20) is
a joy to read, and reread — the perfect match of author and subject. The mix of Anglicanism and doubt, crushes and guilt, Hymns Ancient & Modern and music-hall, fun and fear of death is most sympathetically portrayed. Betjeman touched a chord that went very deep; ‘at some visceral level he spoke for England’. How desperately we need a new Betj to campaign on the conservation front.
I was struck by inspiring potential in John Martin Robinson’s gloriously eccentric memoir Grass Seed in June: The Making of an Architectural Historian (Michael Russell, £16.95). This reactionary redhead has been fighting to save good architecture since he was a boy in Lancashire and he understands that ‘old buildings’ have a chameleon character. He presents a robust, stimulating and bracingly non-PC view of the ‘tragedy of Britain, from idiosyncratic glory to degraded American suburb’.
Previous page
