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Susan’s Bookshelves: The Best of Betjeman selected by John Guest

John Betjeman seems to be a Marmite poet. I love the rueful, wit and rapier-sharp observation of, say “Hunter Trials” or “In Westminster Abbey.” But I had two colleagues in my last teaching post who loathed him. One said Betjeman wrote mere doggerel and the other argued that you couldn’t teach Betjeman’s poetry because he didn’t use “proper” poetic devices so there was nothing there to focus on – yes, really. I, meanwhile, went on happily teaching the poems which featured on the GCSE syllabus (same set as we’d previously done with O level candidates) alongside Laurie Lee, Charles Causley and Ted Hughes.

Rereading Betjeman in 2026, of course, it feels dated but that’s part of the charm. Betjeman was (is) all about nostalgia. This is the man, after all, who almost single handedly saved St Pancras station from demolition because he loved Victorian architecture and look at it now.

One of my favourite poems is “Christmas”:

The bells of waiting Advent ring,

The Tortoise stove is lit again

And lamp oil-light across the night

Has caught the streaks of winter rain

In many a stained-glass window sheen

Fron Crimson Lake to Hookers green,

The  verbal economy, natural rhyme and evocation of an era and mindset is splendid. And I like the colours because they’re the names from the water colour paint boxes every child of my generation remembers. Moreover I never get through a Christmas gift opening session without thinking:

The Sweet and silly Christmas things,

Bath salts and inexpensive scent

And hideous tie so kindly meant.

It’s actually a serious poem too because he’s reflecting in awe and wonder on the truth (or lack of it) of the Christian incarnation message. His point is that if it’s true then the “sweet and silly Christmas things” are irrelevant – a thought I’ve pondered open-mindedly with many classes of 16 year olds.

And, incidentally, what was that about Betjeman not using poetic devices? There is both alliteration and assonance in those five words. Not that such things are the be all and end all of teaching poetry contrary to what my colleague seemed to think.

Betjeman was passionate about church buildings (”A great Victorian church, tall, unbroken and bright”); nature (“Feathery ash, neglected elder”); and Cornwall (“Sun shadowed valleys roll along the sea”) among other things. He loved public transport too.  The poems are suffused with  reference to trains and trolley buses with all their noise and ability to change lives by taking people to different places. Betjeman himself travelled all over the country and was inspired to write poems many of which have the names of locations such as “The Licorice Fields at Pontefract”, “Uffington” and “Norfolk”.

Like all good poets he used a range of forms. There are sonnets like “Chelsea 1977” and forays into pentametric blank verse. “Beside the Seaside and Indoor Games near Newbury” mixes long lines with escalating rhyming couplets. Most of his poems consist of series of neatly rhymed four, five or six line stanzas.

He was good at coy sex too. We all know what happened to the Subaltern who canoodles with the girl of the moment until the small hours only to find that “We sat in the car-park till twenty to one / And now I’m engaged to Joan Hunter Dunn.”

Betjeman, who was born in Cornwall in 1906 and died there 77 years later, was married to Penelope Chetwood with whom he had two children – a fact which always faintly surprises me. He never came across – nor does so in his poetry – as a very masculine man.

As well as poetry he wrote quite a lot of prose and fronted TV programmes on his favourite topics – all of which oevre is worth revisiting. In the days when Poet Laureateship was a lifelong appointment, Betjeman was appointed Laureate from 1972, after the death of C Day Lewis, until his own death in 1984.  John Guest’s little book The Best of Betjeman (first published in 1978) has sat in the poetry section of my bookshelves for a long time. It remains my favourite collection because it includes some of the prose as well as the poetry.

 

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields

 

Am I Losing My Mind Or Just My Figure?

Sam Holland-Bunyan and Genevieve Labuschagne

Untethered + Hinterland

Bridge House Theatre

Star rating 4

This is an imaginative, impeccably acted. one woman show, performed by co-writer Genevieve Labuschagne as Fin.

Fin is 30 years old and working as a push bike courier although illustration is her “real job”. And that point is rather attractively made by projection of her illustrations on  a back sheet acting as a screen. When she talks to her parents, for instance, it’s her drawings of them that we see.

She is a a woman of many moods and anxieties and Labuschagne conveys that with physical theatre, some mime, a huge range of facial expressions and a single large bar stool with an upholstered seat which plays many parts. Fin is often ruefullty funny. At the heart of the piece is her accidental pregnancy (she has a non-committal boyfriend who seems to come good eventually) which ends in early miscarriage and her anguish is deeply distressing. This is female experience writ large – and it’s never straightforward. There is, however a moving happy ending with a very attractive video to make everyone in the audience sigh and smile with relief.

Labuschagne is very good indeed at role-switching. Her portrayal of Maggie, the infuriating midwife is so convincing that she’s unrecognisable as the same actor and the only prop she uses for this is a pair of glasses. She does the same thing with the chain smoking gor-blimey Carol at the food delivery company she works for. Voice, tilt of the head and different body angle and it’s instant transformation.

This admirable show, which co-writer Sam Holland-Bunyan directs, is previewing at The Bridge House before going to Edinburgh. Sadly there were only eight people at the performance I attended. It richly deserves to be seen by many more because it’s full of crystalline observation and truth.

 

Mass in B Minor

JS Bach

The Bach Choir and Florilegium

Conducted by David Hill

Nardus Williams, Helen Charlston, Sam Furness, Neal Davies

Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre

26 May 2026

Bach’s monumental B Minor mass is often deemed by the cognoscenti (including David Hill in his programme note for this concert) to be one of the greatest works ever written. And it has an interesting history. Bach never heard it performed in its entirety. Its UK debut didn’t take place until 1876 and the Bach Choir – celebrating its sesquicentennial this year – was specifically formed for that performance. So anniversaries were in the air at this 2026 performance which was, poignantly, dedicated to Dame Felicity Lott, Bach Choir vice-president who died after the programme was printed so David Hill opened the concert with a verbal tribute.

You can’t beat the Bach Choir for rich, coherent, incisive sound and the Mass got off to a flying start with the choir singing the opening Kyrie off-book. Thereafter the many highlights in a fine performance with very few weak moments included the colour of the trumpets allowed to sing out in Gratias agimus tibi and mezzo Helen Charlston’s beautifully meditative tone in Qui sedes. In the second half I loved the dramatic contrast Hill drew from the choir at Et resurrexit a dn the beauty of the Benedictus with tenor (Ben Furness – good) with solo flute and cello. And when we reached Agnus dei  with all those minor falling phrases Charlston, who has some powerful bottom notes packed it with the requisite plaintiveness.  Best of all though was Dona nobis pacem in all its climatic glory right through to the timp entry. What is it about a work like this which transcends robust disbelief and moves you to tears anyway? Somehow it’s greater than any individual’s religious squeamishness.

It was a treat to watch Florigilegium at work and to hear the authentic sound their period instruments create. And it’s a lovely idea to stand soloists in their sections (is this what would have happened in Bach’s time?) so that they can be seen as well as heard. There are many fabulous solos in the B Minor Mass and it’s a treat to see them celebrated – especially, for example,  leader Huw Daniel dueting with soprano Nardus Williams in Laudamus te.

On a personal note (pun intended) I have huge admiration for people who play period violins and violas. Most have no chin or shoulder rest and the shorter neck of the instrument means that it almost all has to be played in first position. I suppose you get used to it  and it’s a chosen specialism, but I don’t envy anyone having to play a two hour work in this way.

The important thing, though, was the sound: rousing, reflective and immaculately controlled. I shan’t forget that Sanctus for a long time. This take on Bach’s most famous mass more than marked the 150 years since they first did it. I think Dame Felicity would have approved.

 

I read Kathryn Stockett’s wonderful novel The Help soon after it was published and my American niece-in-law drew my attention to it. I marvelled at, and empathised with, black servants employed in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi and longed for more. I didn’t, incidentally, think the 2011 film quite did it justice.

“More” has been a long time coming – seventeen years to be precise – but, by golly, it was worth waiting for. The Calamity Club is a thick, meaty, 638-page novel, Dickensian in scope and scale. But of course we’re not,  in Victorian London. And if you thought puritanical hypocrisy reigned in 1860s Britian, try 1930s Mississippi. I learned social history from this novel which shocked me to the core. Radical “Christianity” has a lot to answer for.

There are two narrators. First there’s Meg, a perceptive, highly intelligent, damaged 11-year-old who has apparently been dumped by her mother and is living in a hideously cruel orphanage in the town of Oxford. I hope Stockett invented “the belt closet” where children are beaten but I fear she probably didn’t. In parallel there’s Birdie. She is  24, unmarried and up from the Delta region to plead with her wealthy married sister because she and her impoverished mother and grandmother are in debt and need help.  Birdie meets Meg when she goes to volunteer at the orphanage, where her sister heroine-worships Garnett Pittman, the foul woman in charge.

Thereafter the complications set in, thick and fast. Sparing you the spoilers there is something odd about Birdie’s brother-in-law, Rory who isn’t paying the staff and seems to have a distant relationship with his needy, tiresome wife. Why does Garnett not want Meg to be adopted – even when she’s selected by an apparently wealthy couple on one of the institution’s ghastly “view days”? Eventually the truth seeps out and it isn’t pretty. Underpinning all this is the Depression, lack of money, prohibition and the appalling doctrinaire suppression which dogged Mississippi in the early 1930s.

The Calamity Club is full of issues, all visited with warmth and humanity. Education, the power of literature and female inequality are all here. So are historical horrors such as the forcible sterilisation (“ropes are cheaper than anaesthesia”) of prostitutes and the ruthless treatment of “diseased” gay men in hospital penitentiaries. Suicide is in the mix too and so is despairing recourse to alcohol.

Best of all, however, is the way this novel presents and celebrates female friendship. Five women – each with a history – come together on a pretty unlikely project whose nickname gives the novel its chirpy title. Several other woman are there to help make it work and eventually they succeed in what they set out to do and the reader wants to cheer. Hurrah for sisterhood and taking charge despite all the forces which are against you. It may not be quite plausible at this point so read this part as a fable  if you prefer.

Despite the seriousness of much of the subject matter, The Calamity Club made me laugh aloud in glee several times. Meg’s wry, inner thoughts and observations are often funny and so is the dawning realisation of what the titular Calamity Club actually is.

There are some unforgettable characters in this novel. Charlie whose brains and single-minded determination drive the Calamity Club is masterly. She has one aim in life – to get custody of her daughter – and we believe in her totally. But if the “Vice Committee” of which Garnett is now chair get wind of where she is she’ll be thwarted. Then there’s Tom, Meg’s adoptive father – a tragic but loveable man. We also meet several delightful, caring, decent black servants who leap off the page as people you’d like to know in real life. Virginia, the feisty, female medical student is great too.

Part of the reason it all works so well is that Stockett is from Jackson, Mississippi and knows the state like the back of her hand. She has also – QED – spent many years researching the history. I shall say nothing about the ending, although for hundreds of pages, I had no idea where she  could/might/would take it. Suffice it to say that I smiled when I reached  the last page.  I also felt bereft because this is one of the most absorbing new novels I’ve read in ages and I was sorry when it was over.

I expect the film rights are already sold – there are some fabulous roles for actors here. This fine novel deserves  the very best possible adaptation for screen. Please, please, please  don’t cock it up.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Best of Betjeman selected by John Guest

HMS Pinafore

WS Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan

Directed by Keith Strachan

Tabard Theatre

Star rating: 5

 

This bijoux version of a dearly loved old favourites brims over with sparky, affectionate delight and original touches.  I am not given to gushing but this really is an outstanding example of to how do G&S in 2026 and make it zing.

The cast of eight are all adept at costume changes and multi-roling. The numbers which Sullivan wrote as choruses become quartets, trios or at most, octets, and you can hear every harmony because there are some fine singers in this production – all using un-mic’d natural sound in the Tabard’s intimate space.

Famously (HMS Pinafore premiered at the Opera Comique in London on 25 May 1878 – almost exactly 148 years ago) it’s a satire on social class. “Love can level ranks and therefore …” Except, of course, that it doesn’t. And if Gilbert’s contrived happy ending is cross-generational and quasi-incestuous, then no one cares much either then or now.

Music is arranged (by Keith Strachan) for keys and flute and Annemarie Lewis Thomas does a fine, indefatigable job as MD. The most impressive work comes, however, from Marissa Landy. She plays flute (and piccolo for the hornpipe) continually moving from a seat beside piano in and out of the action where she sings beautifully as well as playing flute from the stage – which means she has to play most of it from memory.  She is also a fine actor – as Hebe and ensemble roles – with an attractive,  knowing  way of catching the audience’s collective eye. It wasn’t until I read the programme on the way home that I realised that she also choreographed the production. Quite a star.

Gloria Acquaah-Harrison – lovely purple bottom notes – creates a larger than life, flirtatious Buttercup. And I don’t know whose idea it was to render the second verse of her big number as Southern Soul but it’s a stroke of genius as is doing “Over the Bright Blue Sea” with hilarious swing.

Among a strong cast the very talented Leopold Benedict finds quiet dignity in Captain Corcoran and Ryan Erikson Downey gives us a deliciously sly Dick Deadye. I liked the way Stevie Jennings-Adams adopts ultra-heightened RP (think Celia Jonson in Brief Encounter) for Josephine and even manages (impresssive soprano) to sing in it.

There’s a good joke with national flags when we get to “For he is an English man” and the occasional deptartures from Gilbert’s libretto are mostly well judged. Baby farming? “Yes, I looked after babies – for money!” declares defiant Acquaah-Harrison over her shoulder to the audience. It’s a bit sad, maybe that she can, apparently, no longer be described by Corcoran as a “plump and pleasing person.” The substituted adjective “plush” doesn’t quite cut it. But it’s a tiny gripe.

A must-see production, this excellent HMS Pinafore has just two weeks more to run. Steal a ticket if necessary.

Eclipse

John Morton, who also directs

Minerva Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre

Star rating: 4

Photography: Ellie Kurttz

It’s a situation which speaks to all of us. Most of us have been in some version of it. And yes, sad as it is to lose a long-loved family member, there is also humour, exasperation and awkwardness which John Morton’s play catches in spades.

Edward, a moderately successful writer of children’s books, lies dying in a nearby room, His very tense daughter (Sarah Parish) and son (Rupert Penry-Jones) are in attendance along, eventually, along with her husband (Paul Thornley), his ex (Mariam Haque) and a number of professionals and visitors. The action takes place over 24 hours in late summer entirely in a very lovely pine kitchen and large garden. Simon Higlett’s grassy, cosy set is one of the prettiest, most detailed I’ve seen in a while and warmly connotes a comfortable, spacious former rectory in rural Somerset.

Morton has a terrific ear for banal chat which, in a wistful, tactful British way, covers people’s real feelings and reluctance to voice them. At the same time, what do we do? We makes endless cups of tea and eat biscuits. It all creates rueful humour because it is so recognisable.   So are the silences when characters are simply trying not to say anything crass or devoting themselves to trivial tasks such as Thornley’s Graham trying, and  hilariously failing, to mend the toaster. Selina Cadell as home help/carer, Karen, is especially good at this.

Penry Jones gives us a sad, but reasonably worldly man. Unlike his sister he has moved away. He is clearly having relationship difficulties and struggling to come to terms with the imminent loss of his childhood home and everything connected with it. Sarah Parish’s performance is strong too. Her character covers her grief, anxiety and fear with relentless anger, mostly directed at her decent, long-suffering husband. When in the end, the inevitable happens and she crumbles, it’s really quite moving.

Death and a family’s responses to it are, as Jonathan observes, like an eclipse. You assemble to watch it. You know it’s going to happen. But it’s astonishing when it does. Spot on.

It’s good to see a play so generously staged. There are several quite minor characters in this production but no doubling. Moreover it’s a pleasing change to see a new play which isn’t about gay love, domestic violence or politics. Eclipse is gentle, thoughtful, funny and beautifully observed. Catch it if you can.

Warsaw Philharmonic

Conductor: Krzysztof Urbanski

Pianist: Alexandra Dariescu

Zurich International Orchestra Series

Cadogan Hall

19 May 2026

Part of the annual, much appreciated, Zurich International Orchestra Series, this concert allowed a London audience to hear a crack Polish orchestra.

The configuration was unusual although that may be partly because of the limitations of Cadogan Hall’s relatively small stage. Double basses were in a line right across the back behind woodwind and brass with second violins – almost de rigeur these days – seated to the conductor’s right.  It ensured, though, that the basses were always central to the musical texture and worked well.  Goodness knows why, though. they didn’t position the piano centre stage at the beginning instead of performing a complex stage management exercise just five minutes into the concert. It would have been perfectly possible, and much more sensible, to play Grazyna Bacewicz’s jolly, tuneful scherzo – a pleasing concert opener arranged for neo-classical orchestra by the conductor – behind the piano.

Next came Alexandra Dariescu to play Chopin’s second piano concerto. the highlight of which was the lyrical beauty in the second movement, well balanced over pianissimo strings under eloquent piano playing. Urbanski is an attentively supportive, unshowy conductor who never stops beating time with the baton in his right hand while coaxing effects with his left. He did the entire concert without scores which somehow helped to make all the music feel exceptionally cohesive. In this performance of the Chopin he drew out every ounce of orchestral colour and, incidentally, refuted all that trite nonsense about Chopin’s “weak” orchestration skills. The clarinet interjection over strings in the first movement and the lovely bassoon line in the second said it all.

A charismatic performer and stage presence, Dariescu’s choice of encore was both unusual and delightful. With “my new friend” Aleksandra Ohar-Sprawka, front desk cellist, seated with music stand next to the piano, they played the moving romanze from Clara Schumann’s piano concerto. Clearly happy working together, they made it sound both rich and gentle.

After the interval it was on to the mighty, portentous Pathetique symphony – Tchaikovsky arguably at his most magnificent (and troubled?), not long before his death at the age of 53. Now, and on a personal note, I have been on intimate terms with this symphony for over 50 years. I used to play it over and over at full volume in my teenage bedroom while my long-suffering parents were trying to watch Harry Worth on TV downstairs. I know (and love) every note of it. And yet Urbanski managed to make me hear it afresh.

The first movement is almost a symphony in itself from the brooding drama and mood, tempo and dynamic changes to the soaring strings – played by the Warsaw Philharmonic with aplomb but never milked. The 5/4 second movement sounded suitably unsettling and I admired the tuba moment which can go almost unnoticed. The third Allegro molto vivace movement which usually fools audiences (including this one) into thinking it marks the end of the symphony brought terrific work from the percussion section including that triumphant, climactic cymbal clash which is almost my favourite moment in the whole piece.

And then – of course – the impassioned tragedy of the Finale: Adagio lamentoso which was played here as movingly as I’ve ever heard it. The descending string scales were gut wrenching and Urbanski held the tension right though to the last double bass pizzicato note – and for a wonderfully long time as the sound died away.

All in all, yet another pretty memorable ZIOS concert.

 

First published in 1968 Ted Hughes’s novella (for children?) was widely taught, referred to and recommended during most of the years I was teaching in mainstream secondary schools. Thus it has sat on my bookshelves for decades, crying out for reappraisal.

It’s a sci-fi, dystopian fantasy in which a huge (“head shaped like a dustbin but big as a bedroom”) Iron Man falls into the sea, breaks into pieces and reassembles himself to the terrified horror of the villagers, especially a boy named Hogarth. So they try to destroy him.  Later, when a dragon as big as Australia lands on that continent from outer space (the geography is fun), humans realise that the Iron Man could be the answer to this dreadful threat. So they change tack and befriend him. Then there’s a contest of strength. No prizes for guessing who wins.

At one level it’s simply an exciting, rather whacky imaginative story with a nod to David and Goliath. But of course Hughes must have intended  some kind of message – maybe something to do with the potential for technology to overpower nature? He must also have been thinking about space travel because this was the time of the Apollo missions and just a year before the 1969 moon landing. He probably had the nuclear threat in mind too because the Cold War was a hideous, frightening reality in 1968 – and his monstrous space dragon is casually saying that he will obliterate the world if his wishes aren’t met. Rereading it nearly 60 years later I can see climate change in the mix too. So perhaps it meets the criteria for a great work of fiction: it can be read and interpreted in any way which works for your own time and context. The reader has to respond. It’s very much a two-way process.

The writing is, as you’d expect, gloriously poetic but always accessible. Hughes, remember, wrote a lot of poetry specifically for children as well as his raw, searching stuff for adults. How about: “He picked up a greasy black stove and chewed it like toffee”, “the grey, empty moving tide” or “great grinding voice”?

However, the 2026 me has a problem with plausibility. I can, with an effort, accept iron giants and continent-sized dragons but what language is everyone speaking? Hogarth uses ordinary English to speak to the Iron Man who then addresses the “space-bat-angel-dragon” easily in the same language. Where and how did they learn it?  Would this have bothered me less in 1968 or when I was a child? Don’t know.

My other issue is with illustration. There have been several illustrators for different editions  of The Iron Man along with various TV and stage adaptations.  My copy dates from the early 1980s and is illustrated by George Adamson and his work is true to the text.  Contentiously, though, I don’t think there should be any illustrations at all. Hughes describes his two main creations with his usual graphic, accurate economy. They will be much more powerful if they are left to the reader’s imagination. Any attempt to capture them by drawing them feels belittlingly trivial. It comes back to my oft-made point that reading works in both directions as the writer’s mind becomes a hotline to the reader’s mind. Illustration can get in the way and certainly does in this case.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett