Collected Poems

"I considered the possibility of choosing an obscure poet to impress you, but kept coming back to Betjeman, who conjured up an Englishness that nobody else has. There is more mundane reality with Philip Larkin . Larkin is the poet of the way we are. Betjeman is the poet of the way we would like ourselves to be. He combined an evocation of England with a command of ordinary human emotions. There is one poem he wrote called “The Hon. Sec.” which I’ll read the final verse of: “A gentle guest, a willing host, / Affection deeply planted – It’s strange that those we miss the most / Are those we take for granted.” It makes me a bit teary actually, because it brings back precisely those people without ever knowing how much their loss would mean. It was his use of landscape. He had a wonderful sense of place. He did the Shell guides for Devon and Cornwall, which are among my set texts whenever I am travelling there. It’s much broader than that. He had an eye for the spirit of a place. I believe that every county, every town and every village in Britain has its own particular genius. That is what I’m working at describing in the book I’m writing now [to be published in 2014]. If I can sum up in 160,000 words what Betjeman was capable of capturing in 160 words, then I will be happy with what I have achieved. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Oh, give me a break. I am due to report the Olympics, I am absolutely determined to enjoy the Olympics, but I wish they were being staged in Paris. It’s true I don’t like leaving England in the summer, but in this case I wish I was far away from the Olympic bubble, where the laws of our country will be subordinate to the whims of the International Olympic Committee. The whole thing is a completely mad act of self-aggrandisement. Cricket is a part of us. No one else could have invented quite such an absurd game. Cricket is protean. It can be a serene game played on a country field where nothing much happens, watched by half a dozen snoozing people in deck chairs with the sun in the sky and the kettle on. Or it can be a hundred thousand Indians packed into a stadium, watching helmeted figures dressed in colourful clothing whack the ball all over the place amid deafening roars and dancing girls. It is an incredibly adaptable game, with myriad qualities. And that, of course, is the essence of the United Kingdom itself."