John Betjeman: The Biography

This biography takes the reader from Betjeman''s troubled childhood in north London, through his blossoming at Oxford; a gay fling with W. H. Auden; a clandestine marriage to a field marshal''s daughter; pranks as a film critic; wartime service and probable espionage in Ireland, to the glory days of his later years when his Collected Poems became a runaway bestseller. This book is a distillation of Bevis Hillier''s three-volume biography, authorized by Betjeman himself.