City and Suburban
By JOHN BETJEMAN The recent keen frosty air has made me acutely aware of London's skyline. Things stand out sharply and I wonder whether we arc right, even in the acute housing shortage, in building high blocks of flats in the form of eleven- to fifteen-storey slabs. For all the space these slabs are meant to leave open on the ground, they dominate a whole district for miles and cast a gloom of shadow over a considerable acreage. Their skylines. sharp as a packing case against the sky with a parcel left on top for housing the lift machinery, are inexcusably ugly. I believe that Lyndon is a horizontal and not a vertical city, that street life is our natural way of life and that the only high buildings we should have should be in the form of towers, not slabs, and that they should rise among comparatively low buildings and be as elegant as possible. Perhaps some architect will design a tower form which will be as welcome and refreshing to the eye as the Victoria Tower or the threatened campanile of the Imperial Institute. It is impossible to make general rules about building heights in London because each case must be treated on its merits and London is still a collection of villages, each with its distinct quality and characteristic skyline. How many miles Soho seems from Hanover Square, yet only Regent Street divides them.
LIVING IN LONDON
if I did not live in the City when in London, which is far the pleasantest place to live as it is quiet at night and village- like during the day and the other way on from all the rush- hour traffic, I think I would choose Canonbury or Bedford Park. The first is a spaciously laid out Georgian suburb high on a hill top, which has been most beautifully restored and brought back to life since the war by private enterprise. The second is a picturesque late-Victorian suburb of 'Queen Anne style' houses designed for artistic people of moderate incomes, amid flowering trees and wide winding roads. It is sadly dilapi- dated and needs the restoration of its self-respect.
DELICIOUSLY DRY
The Bishop of Guildford (Montgomery Campbell), who is Bishop of London-elect, is a wit and a character. I have heard from many sources of his deliciously dry remarks. But that which I have heard most frequently, and therefore regard as the most authentic, is about a retreat for priests which was held at Farnham Castle. One of the retreatants, unable to withstand the lure of the world, went into the town to get some tobacco. While on his way there he came face to face with the Bishop himself and thought it best to brave his way out of the situation by being completely honest, so he said, 'Oh, my Lord, the Holy Spirit guided me here this afternoon to get some tobacco.' Then,' said the Bishop, 'one of you must be wrong, for it is early closing day.' I wonder if the Bishop could have been that undergraduate of whom Carola Oman told me. She said that her father, Sir Charles Oman. had to correct some papers in which one of the questions was, 'If Alfred the Great had been alive today, what would he have thought of the internal combustion engine?' The under- graduate wrote : 'If Alfred the Great were alive today he would have been so very old that he would have had hardly any thoughts at all.' The risk of printing any little jokes in this column is that people will write and say they heard them years ago in Australia about somebody else. 1 therefore apologise in advance.
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