John Betjeman, a talk by Denis Moriarty. Friday 5 December

Our Subject: JOHN BETJEMAN 1906 – 1984 First and last loves of Architecture

John Betjeman, the Poet Laureate who died in 1984, was one of the best loved public

figures of our time. His poetry, a delight of rhythm, metre and rhyme, had

immediate accessibility and appeal; his Englishness went to the heart of England and

the English. There was nostalgia and melancholy for sure, but also a vibrant good

humour, and a capacity for uproarious laughter and hilarity - at our society, our

institutions, and, above all, ourselves. His first and last loves were architecture -

particularly churches and railway stations, the foibles and frailties of human nature,

landscape and the spirit of place. This lecture, illustrated by slides and generous

references to the prose writing and poetry, is set in the context of his biography; a

north London childhood, holidays in Cornwall, education at Marlborough and Oxford,

early married life in the villages of what was West Berkshire. Later, in London, he

became an architectural writer and was a pioneer in creating an awareness for con-

servation and the preservation of good architecture, John Betjeman sharpened

perceptions and heightened a sense of aesthetic appreciation. He inspired and showed

a public not only where to look at with love, but what to love and look after for the

future.

Selected Bibliography:

John Betjeman: Collected Poems, John Murray, London 2003

                                    First and Last Loves, John Murray, London 1952

                                    Ghastly Good Taste, Anthony Blond, London, 1970

                                    An Oxford University Chest, John Miles, London 1938

                                    Summoned by Bells, John Murray, London, 1960

                                    Letters (2 vol, ed Candida Lycett Green), Methuen, London,1994 & 95

                                    Coming Home, an anthology of prose, Vintage, London, 1998

Bevis Hillier                  John Betjeman, abridged biography, John Murray, London, 2001

Three volume biography: Young Betjeman, 1988; New Fame, New Love, 2002; The Bonus of Laughter, 2009

A N Wilson                  John Betjeman, Hutchinson, London, 2006

                                   

Our Speaker: DENIS MORIARTY (Who kindly provided the above information)

Denis Moriarty is a lecturer and Study Course director who spent most of his earlier working life

as a BBC television producer. He was educated at Reading School, and after national service as an infantry officer in the Royal Berkshire regiment in Germany, read history at St John's College, Oxford. He joined the BBC in 1959, and after a short period in radio and personnel, became a director and producer in television Music and Arts. His programmes included the series on ENGLISH TOWNS with Alec Clifton-Taylor, FACE THE MUSIC with Joseph Cooper and Joyce Grenfell, ONE HUNDRED GREAT PAINTINGS, EDWIN LUTYENS MASTER ARCHITECT, THE TRIUMPH OF THE WEST, and films on Egypt in the CHRONICLE and TIMEWATCH series'

He lectures widely for the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies - NADFAS - visiting many societies in the United Kingdom, on the continent and in Australia; he also addresses meetings of the National Trust, English summer festivals, civic and literary societies, and he has been a tutor at Cambridge University's Extramural Department at Madingley Hall. He has directed study courses at music festivals at home and abroad - Prague, Salzburg, Schwarzenberg (Austria), Vienna and Flnland, and leads architectural and historical tours in England and to France, ltaly, Portugal and the Azores, Spain and Malta, Sri Lanka, north and south India, and east coast America. He has also worked in Egypt, cruises on the Nile, Mexico and Latin America.

Denis Moriarty's prime interests are music - he sang for a number of years in the Philharmonia Chorus - and architecture; he has a special love of England and its churches and enjoys long walks in the countryside. He is a keen opera and theatre-goer, and at university performed in plays and revue with, among others, Dudley Moore, Denis Moriarty is a former Mayor of Henley-on-Thames, and was twice a parliamentary candidate in the two elections of 1974. He lives in central London.

Denis Moriarty edited Alec Clifton-Taylor's papers and architectural notes for a posthumous

publication BUILDINGS OF DELIGHT - Gollancz 1986, who also published his own book Buildings of the Cotswolds in 1989, both reissued as paperbacks in the Building Heritage series 2000. He contributed the article on Alec Clifton-Taylor to the Dictionary of National Biography, OUP 1990.

 Clicking on the link below will tke you to his website

 http://www.denismoriarty.com/