All Formats & Editions

This verse autobiography relates the story of the author's younger days set against the places and buildings that were significant in his youth - Highgate, Cornwall, Chelsea, Marlborough, Oxford quads, churches and railway stations.

From the leafy streets of Edwardian Hampstead to the halls of Oxford, this is the stirring early life of John Betjeman told in his own lively blank verse. Betjeman describes in lush detail his?formative years:?the sounds and smells of a middle-class childhood spent in Cornwall;... Read Full Overview

John Betjeman's verse autobiography has sold more copies than any other English poem of its length this century. The touching story of a boy's growth to early manhood and the mixed joys and guilt of youth, it is also supremely a poem about places, buildings and surroundings -... Read Full Overview

Summoned by Bells has become a classic. Shortly after it was published in 1960 it was heralded as the verse autobiography of the century. It is a uniquely evocative narrative of the agonies and delights of growing up, set against the familiar backgrounds of Highgate, Cornwall,... Read Full Overview

When I returned from school I found we'd moved: '53 Church Street. Yes, the slummy end'-- A little laugh accompanied the joke, For we were Chelsea now and we had friends Whose friends had friends who knew Augustus John: We liked bold colour schemes--orange and black-- And clever... Read Full Overview