Richard Ingrams
The First Clerihews by E. C. Bentley (OUP) is a nicely produced facsimile of the St Paul's School notebook with G. K. C's drawings. I also enjoyed Brief Lives by Alan Watkins (Hamish Hamilton). It told me nothing new about myself, and I could have done without the pedestrian profiles of politicians; but there is plenty of good stuff about Grub Street, notably affec- tionate portraits of Maurice Richardson and Philip Hope-Wallace. John Betjeman's Uncollected Poems (John Murray) was an unexpected bonus. The editor, Bevis Hillier, has been accused of scraping the barrel but in my view wrongly. This slim volume contains some of Sir John's best work like the moving lines addressed to his famous teddy-bear Archibald — 'He has no mouth but seems to say: They'll burn you on the Judgment Day.'
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