Tags
A Shropshire Lad, A Subaltern’s Love Song, An Edwardian Sunday, John Betjeman, OXFORD: SUDDEN ILLNESS AT THE BUS-STOP, P G Wodehouse, Song of a Nightclub Proprietess
Almost the last poet of the 20th century whom I shall discuss may seem a most unusual choice. He certainly would not qualify as a genius, but he was not only a most entertaining writer, he also had a delightful sense of nostalgia. This I think serves to make his vision of the process of age and change well worth recording.
His subject matter was essentially England, and he was easily the most popular Poet Laureate in that country since Tennyson. His evocation of long lost country pastimes, if not quite as preposterous as that of P G Wodehouse, is unreal but compelling. There is no way, having read of her, that one can forget Joan Hunter Dunn of A Subaltern’s Love Song –