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Summoned by Bells
Summoned by Bells
128 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
July 26, 2012
Listened to this in the car and had Betjeman's own fruity tones sounding forth. Stopped at traffic lights and in jams, I received one or two funny looks until I realized I still had it blaring out so as to be heard over the 'roar'...if that is not butching it up too much... of my smart car's engine forgetting that, now stationery, the engine was quietly ticking over and I had the deliberately laid back Poet Laureate screaming out like some mad harridan. Innocent bystanders, ears bleeding from the onslaught, stumbled home summoned not by bells but by a throbbing ache and I have probably put back the cause of his poetry about three decades in Poole.
Hearing him read though, at a normal level, you capture the glorious alliteration and the simplicity of the language. He is not, by any shadow of means my favourite english poet, not by a long way, but his honesty, the poignant references to the difficutlies of his relationship with his parents and his father's understandable but never to be fulfilled expectations; his first hero worship, the agony and ectasty inherent in this; his snobbish disregard of others and his arrogant assumption of success. All this couched in simple images and unpretentious language makes it easy to digest and easy to enjoy but, dare I say, also fairly easy to forget.
In all honesty, though I enjoyed the excursion, I doubt I will come this way again.
Hearing him read though, at a normal level, you capture the glorious alliteration and the simplicity of the language. He is not, by any shadow of means my favourite english poet, not by a long way, but his honesty, the poignant references to the difficutlies of his relationship with his parents and his father's understandable but never to be fulfilled expectations; his first hero worship, the agony and ectasty inherent in this; his snobbish disregard of others and his arrogant assumption of success. All this couched in simple images and unpretentious language makes it easy to digest and easy to enjoy but, dare I say, also fairly easy to forget.
In all honesty, though I enjoyed the excursion, I doubt I will come this way again.
May 25, 2024
This is so good that I forgot, for two hours, that I needed to pee.
I picked it up this morning to read one chapter before breakfast and thought 'I need to pee anyway, so one chapter is all I'll manage, and I'll come back to it later'.
I ended up reading it slowly, to savour the words and rhythm. It's gentle but gripping, sad and joyful. An absolute masterpiece.
Two hours completely disappeared and I forgot my need to pee until I finished and closed the book, at which point it came back with a vengeance and I thought I might die.
I picked it up this morning to read one chapter before breakfast and thought 'I need to pee anyway, so one chapter is all I'll manage, and I'll come back to it later'.
I ended up reading it slowly, to savour the words and rhythm. It's gentle but gripping, sad and joyful. An absolute masterpiece.
Two hours completely disappeared and I forgot my need to pee until I finished and closed the book, at which point it came back with a vengeance and I thought I might die.
May 23, 2020
Reading this feels like walking along an English country lane at dusk in summer, the faint smell of honey-suckle drifting on the cool breeze. It is familiar, and bittersweet
September 20, 2013
With apologies to Sir John:
From luxury of breakfast
Taken in my room
And sound of birdsong interrupted
Only by the strains of Bach...
I wandered from my eyrie
Catching the early morning sun
Upon that early stubble
Rustle of autumn leaves upon the path
That led between the trees to school
And strolling with patrician ease
Into the Upper Quad
Feet crunching gravel
To Medieval History, with Ted
(Jesus) Master of Sankey's
Whose favours I'd preferred to those of Robin,
(Gonville and Caius), his smile
Always a touch too thin and hesitant
While Victorian annals I'd eschewed
However well served up by Briggs and Young
In favour of 'Annales' - Bloch and Southern
Whose pages, though at first obscure,
Shone like the stained glass in the Chapel
Deeper, though, in reds and blues
Of the Sainte Chapelle and Vezelay
Opening the aromatic pages
Of some newly-discovered tome
And weighing architectural merits
Of French v. English late Baroque,
Listening to Sinfonia Concertante
(HMV, Dorati, LSO)
I felt, at last, I'd come into my own...
What was my own?
I partly liked to shock
Proffer the opposite opinion
Duck out of games, run down the CCF,
And think them fools who tried their best ...
But cynicism soon gave way to doubt
Dark inexplicable feelings, trembles
That came, unwelcome, like dark clouds
I could not explain this new, unasked for, persecution
And in the end, they turned me down!
From luxury of breakfast
Taken in my room
And sound of birdsong interrupted
Only by the strains of Bach...
I wandered from my eyrie
Catching the early morning sun
Upon that early stubble
Rustle of autumn leaves upon the path
That led between the trees to school
And strolling with patrician ease
Into the Upper Quad
Feet crunching gravel
To Medieval History, with Ted
(Jesus) Master of Sankey's
Whose favours I'd preferred to those of Robin,
(Gonville and Caius), his smile
Always a touch too thin and hesitant
While Victorian annals I'd eschewed
However well served up by Briggs and Young
In favour of 'Annales' - Bloch and Southern
Whose pages, though at first obscure,
Shone like the stained glass in the Chapel
Deeper, though, in reds and blues
Of the Sainte Chapelle and Vezelay
Opening the aromatic pages
Of some newly-discovered tome
And weighing architectural merits
Of French v. English late Baroque,
Listening to Sinfonia Concertante
(HMV, Dorati, LSO)
I felt, at last, I'd come into my own...
What was my own?
I partly liked to shock
Proffer the opposite opinion
Duck out of games, run down the CCF,
And think them fools who tried their best ...
But cynicism soon gave way to doubt
Dark inexplicable feelings, trembles
That came, unwelcome, like dark clouds
I could not explain this new, unasked for, persecution
And in the end, they turned me down!
August 5, 2018
Published in 1960, this collection of Betjeman's verse covers his memories of early years. Of childhood in London, holidays in Cornwall, schooldays at Marlborough College and University at Oxford.
I like the places and the time that the verses invoke. Memories of an Edwardian childhood in North London, right through to Oxford in the late 1920s, where Betjeman famously did not see eye to eye with one of his tutors, C S Lewis. Some people didn't like his verse, thought it too humorous and light-hearted for him to be made the poet laureate in the 1970s. I always enjoyed his rhymes and though him an interesting man. He championed all things Victorian, especially buildings. Form these early verses we see him on a bicycle visiting old English churches, much as I did when I was a boy.
So this slender volume is a delight of old memories and a time long since vanished. I have my first edition, from 1960 with a small selection of woodcut illustrations ahead of each verse, places I know in London, Cornwall, Marlborough and Oxford. When my volume arrived in the post a couple of months back, it contained a few old press cuttings inside the front cover. A review of the book from 1960, a picture of Betjeman in later life and an obituary of Augustus John, who died in 1961. I love those little snapshots into the life and likes of a previous owner.
I like the places and the time that the verses invoke. Memories of an Edwardian childhood in North London, right through to Oxford in the late 1920s, where Betjeman famously did not see eye to eye with one of his tutors, C S Lewis. Some people didn't like his verse, thought it too humorous and light-hearted for him to be made the poet laureate in the 1970s. I always enjoyed his rhymes and though him an interesting man. He championed all things Victorian, especially buildings. Form these early verses we see him on a bicycle visiting old English churches, much as I did when I was a boy.
So this slender volume is a delight of old memories and a time long since vanished. I have my first edition, from 1960 with a small selection of woodcut illustrations ahead of each verse, places I know in London, Cornwall, Marlborough and Oxford. When my volume arrived in the post a couple of months back, it contained a few old press cuttings inside the front cover. A review of the book from 1960, a picture of Betjeman in later life and an obituary of Augustus John, who died in 1961. I love those little snapshots into the life and likes of a previous owner.
December 28, 2016
This book is interesting because it’s a sort of weird mix between poetry and non-fiction. In Summoned By Bells, Betjeman effectively tells the story of his life in a sort of weird mixture of rhyming and non-rhyming verse, with plenty of insightful commentary on the events that shaped his career.
I don’t know much about him, but I grabbed this book from the charity shop bins outside where I work and then discovered that it’s a first edition. It’s a beautiful book and I’m proud to own it; not for everyone, though.
I don’t know much about him, but I grabbed this book from the charity shop bins outside where I work and then discovered that it’s a first edition. It’s a beautiful book and I’m proud to own it; not for everyone, though.
January 8, 2014
From BBC Radio 4 Extra:
The late poet laureate's 'life in verse', from nursery to university. Read by the author. Recorded in 1960.
The late poet laureate's 'life in verse', from nursery to university. Read by the author. Recorded in 1960.
June 27, 2019
This autobiography-in-blank-verse covers Betjemen's middle-class childhood in pre-WW2 England, and his first year at university. He is a witty, lively poet, and his descriptions of his childhood are self-deprecating, astute, and sometimes funny. At times, his poetry captures the beauty of place or nature in vibrant, original ways, and can be very moving. At other times, his blank-verse is pedestrian, and his thoughts are trite. The last chapter of the book, describing Betjeman's failed year at university, is where the book really falls down: Betjeman sycophanticly describes lecturers and friends, and repeats the kind of Oxbridge stories that weigh many memories. However, there's a lot to like here, and it's a shame it ends on such a bum note.
March 9, 2021
This is wonderful Betjeman, providing a great insight into his family life and his time at Marlborough College as a boarder and at Oxford University, from where he was sent down for failing in Divinity. There is much good humour but also a poignancy to the difficulties he highlights with regard to the relationship with his father with whom he had little if anything in common. It is a relatively quick read and at its conclusion it relates the humourous tale of his time as a cricket coach / teacher.
January 8, 2022
A truly amazing achievement. The flowing prose so smoothly written draws you seductively through childhood reveries densely detailed in recounted metre, while aesthetic passions so fervently indulged (in poetry, church architecture, and Cornwall), can't help inspire a deep love of antiquity and reading for pleasure.
The poet on a bildungsroman journey from teddy bear innocence to university dropout failure and beyond.
Just the idea is enough to win you over; autobiography in blank verse. The execution, as ever with Betjeman, is second to none.
The poet on a bildungsroman journey from teddy bear innocence to university dropout failure and beyond.
Just the idea is enough to win you over; autobiography in blank verse. The execution, as ever with Betjeman, is second to none.
December 19, 2021
I’m pretty sure I read this, found on the poetry shelves in the University of Texas at Arlington library, as an undergrad about a half century ago. I remember mostly enjoying it, though much of the “public” school and university world must have been quite arcane to a working class Texas boy. And some of the references are still arcane, though I’ve read zillions of pages of English lit since then. But it’s a deft and fairly interesting version of an often shallow young manhood.
January 21, 2023
I read this short blank verse autobiography in carefully apportioned pieces, just because it's such a delight. It's a wonderful illustration of how the natural timbre of language, without resorting to rhyme, can rhythmically charm the ears - particularly if composed in Shakespeare's favoured iambic pentameter.
May 17, 2026
Autobiography in poetry. Most poetry seems to be that to me anyway, but is a treat when done so explicitly. The poet wandering back through his past and reliving those childhood experiences with his full grown poet’s mind. Like he’s sharing his young life with us. And also, I relish any poem’s about Cornwall.
October 31, 2020
An iconic book - a best selling verse autobiography by one of England's great eccentrics-poet, lover of architecture and the railways, TV and radio celebrity. Probably a mystery to most people born before 1980 but Betjeman was and still is an English institution.
March 19, 2023
Beautiful book in a lovely edition. Though it's a poetic autobiography, it fairly rattles along. Unusually, it's something of a page turner. I enjoyed his description of a life in England between the wars and his sympathy for all he encountered. A great read.
September 12, 2018
A beautifully descriptive piece of work.
January 23, 2019
Absolutely delightful.
September 30, 2021
Lost in the dream
November 22, 2021
Easy to read and a good insite to his life
January 8, 2023
Sorry it’s just not my thing, I read the whole book but just couldn’t get on with it. Poetry is not my chowed genre but a new year and a new genre. I shall seek another poet. Any recommendations??
January 17, 2023
an amazing autobiography in verse, unique and beautiful.
April 20, 2025
Read in a day for the Readathon.
Wonderful piece of blank verse autobiography. Shall also listen to JB reading it on Spotify !
Wonderful piece of blank verse autobiography. Shall also listen to JB reading it on Spotify !
October 4, 2025
It's Betjeman. It's not his best. But there are some good passages in here.
February 2, 2026
A unique verse autobiography that uses the material of his own life to tell his story in poetic form. This is a beautiful collection from one of the great British poets of the twentieth century.
March 26, 2026
A brilliant and readable biography and poem.
April 23, 2026
Intimate and sweetly sentimental. A gentle and honest portrayal of childhood and growing up. Betjeman at his best.
March 8, 2026
Rather self-consciously fuddy-duddy but certain passages work wonders.
October 16, 2025
Beautifully written and so of evocative of the people and places in Betjeman's early years. I am not normally a fan of blank verse, but his command of language and meter were delightful.
February 5, 2013
Betjeman himself said of this he'd gone "as near prose as he dare". If you can get beyond the thee and thy and the frequent apostrophising of roads, beaches, churches and childhood friends, it evokes a vanished world of comfortable privilege very effectively.
No matter how much i reread it, it's always enjoyable. Betjeman knew what he was doing, as with the collected poems he did what he did well and stuck with it. The narrating voice has a wry distance on the story, which allows for shades of very British self-deprecating Irony.
Favorite story: The precocious Betjeman, in Highgate Junior School, has decided to be a poet. He writes his collected poems out by hand in a book he's been given for the purpose:
And so I bound my verse into a book,
'The Best of Betjeman" and handed it
To one who, I was told, liked poetry
The American Master, Mr. Eliot.
That dear good man, with Prufrock in his head
And Sweeney waiting to be agonized,
I wonder what the thought? He never says
When now we meet, across the port and cheese.
He looks the same as then, long, lean,and pale,
Still with the slow deliberating speech
And enigmatic answers. At the time
A boy called Jelly said: "He thinks they're bad"-
But he himself is still too kind to say.
No matter how much i reread it, it's always enjoyable. Betjeman knew what he was doing, as with the collected poems he did what he did well and stuck with it. The narrating voice has a wry distance on the story, which allows for shades of very British self-deprecating Irony.
Favorite story: The precocious Betjeman, in Highgate Junior School, has decided to be a poet. He writes his collected poems out by hand in a book he's been given for the purpose:
And so I bound my verse into a book,
'The Best of Betjeman" and handed it
To one who, I was told, liked poetry
The American Master, Mr. Eliot.
That dear good man, with Prufrock in his head
And Sweeney waiting to be agonized,
I wonder what the thought? He never says
When now we meet, across the port and cheese.
He looks the same as then, long, lean,and pale,
Still with the slow deliberating speech
And enigmatic answers. At the time
A boy called Jelly said: "He thinks they're bad"-
But he himself is still too kind to say.
August 9, 2015
John Betjeman tells the story of his early life in 115 pages of blank verse, interspersed with short poems in more formal forms. I've been meaning to read this for years, and have really enjoyed sinking into it over a beautiful summer weekend. Betjeman is so good on the physical sensations of childhood: the safe warmth of the nursery, the sights and sounds of seaside holidays, the privations of public school life, but he is also very perceptive about family tensions. He vividly examines the strains between his parents and the disappointment and anger his father feels at young John's failure to be the fifth generation of Betjeman to enter the family firm, preferring instead to live a dissolute life at Oxford, being sent down before he could take his degree. This is frank and vivid a memoir as any told in a more traditional form.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews