Sir John Betjeman

 

Sir John Betjeman

 Statue of John Betjeman at St Pancras Station, London.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The Poet Laureate is appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom, following advice from the current Prime Minister. It is expected, though not demanded, that the Poet Laureate will produce verse for important national occasions. For example, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote ‘Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington’ in 1852, and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ in 1854.

Royal events, like weddings or funerals, are often the subject of the poems. Poets will frequently be inspired or be commissioned to write about other things, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, or the deaths of the last two (British) First World War soldiers in 2009.

John Betjeman (1906-1984) was an English poet and writer and was the Poet Laureate for the final twelve years of his life. His poem ‘Slough,’ was published in 1937 and bemoaned what Betjeman saw as the industrialisation of Britain and the profiteering thereby.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town –
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

 And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;  
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.

It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Slough is a town in Berkshire and has had an undeservedly bad reputation. In the years following the end of the First World War, army motor vehicles returned from Flanders were repaired and stored and eventually an industrial estate was established. Industrialisation continued apace, attracting workers from abroad, as well as from various parts of the UK. It suffered many air raids in 1940, but after the end of World War Two, thousands of people moving out of war-torn London were accommodated in large, new housing estates.

Betjeman later regretted his harsh poem about Slough. At the time he wrote it, he probably had little idea that bombs would indeed fall on Slough.

He was a founding member of ‘The Victorian Society’ and ‘Friends of Friendless Churches.’ He loved Victorian architecture and was a leading figure in the campaign to save St Pancras railway station. A statue of him by the sculptor Martin Jennings was unveiled there in 2007.