Being Betjeman(n) by Jonathan Smith

Jonathan Smith has had a quiet career as a novelist, never making a big 'splash'. Long ago I admired novels such as The English Lover (about an English teacher), Wilfred and Eileen and In Flight, as well as his book about teaching, The Learning Game (Smith was Head of English at Tonbridge School). His radio plays for the BBC have been another channel in his writing, notably those based on the life and works of John Betjeman.

Now comes the enormously enjoyable Being Betjeman(n), an unclassifiable and highly personal book about the poet, but also about mental health, teaching, parenting and friendship. I read it in a day.

Smith moves fluidly between these areas throughout the book. Early on he writes that

Betjeman and my mental health, in ways that I am still trying to understand, seemed somehow to fuse together. Quite suddenly, or it felt quite suddenly, although I now realise it was not sudden, I did not know who I was or, as Dusty Springfield sang, with her big eyes and her lashings of mascara, I did not know what to do with myself. ‘I just don't know what to do with myself.’ I felt lost, even when I was with my family and close friends. I was without ballast and with no anchor, apart from poetry.

Then, just like Betjeman before him, he develops Parkinson's. The rest of the book is a description of and reflection on Betjeman's life, particularly the poet’s relationship with his (terrible) father, and later on with his own son. It is also a defence of the qualities of poems which are often patronised, and a moving account of Smith's deep friendship with the late Benjamin Whitrow, the actor who played the poet in the radio play Mr Betjeman's Class.

I heard of the book via the Tiny in all That Air podcast from the Larkin Society, in which Jonathan Smith talks engagingly to Lyn Lockwood about the origins of the book and the poet's relationship with Larkin. For anyone who thinks Betjeman is cuddly, read 'Devonshire Street', below.

Another treat: the Jim Parker's 1974 album Sir John Betjeman's Banana Blush. Here's a Jarvis Cocker radio programme on it. It's on Spotify.

Finally, the (n) in the title refers to the letter dropped from the family name during the First World War, to avoid it looking so German. This fascinating book is full of such adjustments to and hidings from identity, as Jonathan Smith weaves his beautiful piece of story-telling.